Smalltalk at oopsla

Alejandro F. Reimondo aleReimondo at smalltalking.net
Thu Oct 20 16:58:22 UTC 2005


Hi Alexandre,
Thank you for the comments on OOPSLA.

> like: "Eclipse tries to achieve something that Smalltalk did 20 years
> ago, and remains still behind". The room was completely full at that
> time.

Most people on Java side see Object Orientation as a path to Object
Technology.
Under this point of view, pointing to Smalltalk guaranties reaching
 the target some day in an hypothetical future.
One of the "side effects" of this pov is that smalltalkers with weak
 education try to reduce/formalize/force Smalltalk to be defined
 as an object "oriented" language.
On both sides of the path people is working on building a bridge
 and wasting time and efforts.

Comments on projections from OO to OT reminds me the
comments on Java programming that can be read on Tim's web site at
http://www.rowledge.org/tim/squeak/index.html

And also make me remember a company trying to building
a bridge to Smalltalk for Java people and wasting money
given by Smalltalk customers...

We have a lot of evidence that show that singular elements present in
any Smalltalk Ambience and it's modes of non-formal use are
not simple projections of formal methods (reduction to objects).

IMHO we must try to reflect on this elements and activities
that let us build organisms (and not only draw architectures)
and reinforce the underlying technology to make real/independent
advances in O.T.
I think that advances in O.T. do not implies better multimedia
 nor easy/innocent use of Smalltalk ambiences.

The direction of real advance, imo, is in non-formal activities and
education
that can be realized using Smalltalk as a medium for Education in Ambience.
With this objectives I have founded Smalltalking (
http://www.smalltalking.net )
some years ago, and have found that it is very difficult to make a real
advance in O.T. because people continuously are trying to see "the bridge"
and think that all can be reduced to objects and the only they can do is
to assemble machines and formalize/draw architectures.

Informatics as a concecuence of computation and consumption...
Objects as products of formalizations.

All people doing the same that is demonstrated that produce
 unmanageable results and "side effects".
We have in Smalltalk the support for education on open systems.
 e.g. to make activities that complement formal design and reduce
 the application of formal method/prediction to well known pieces.

We have (in Smalltalking) documentation on this approach and
 experiences collected on real ambients and some in Smalltalk
 but most of the material is written in Spanish.
Today is difficult to find people with real interests in non-formal
 activities and education.
Smalltalk has a real value as a support for information
 processes and EA.

best,
Ale.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexandre Bergel" <bergel at iam.unibe.ch>
To: "Squeak List" <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>;
<esug-list at lists.esug.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 4:52 PM
Subject: Smalltalk at oopsla


> Hello,
>
> Today is the last day of oopsla. It was a really cool surprise to see
> how many times Smalltalk was cited during talks and how many
> compliments it obtained. Here some particular moment I enjoyed:
>      - Before the keynote of Mary Beth, James Noble said something
> like: "Eclipse tries to achieve something that Smalltalk did 20 years
> ago, and remains still behind". The room was completely full at that
> time.
>      - The room where the Croquet workshop hold was completely full,
> even if the organization was a bit shaky (please, do not take it
> bad :-), this was really cool! The room was completely full, and it
> did not contains only smalltalkers, but also people who were just
> curious and wanted to learn more.
>      - David Reed gave a talk on Croquet, and the room was really
> big, and was completely full.
>      - Roel Wuyts was chair of the Symposium on Dynamic Languages.
> And again, the room was too small to contain all the attendees :-)
> Especially for the very last talk given by Brian Foote; the doors had
> to left open in order to make people standing  outside able to listen.
>      - Martin McClure organized a Squeak BOF. That was really cool.
> Again, some people came here just to learn more about squeak/smalltalk.
>
> I was also delighted to see that some technical presentations in the
> research tracks shown DrScheme into action. Kathryn did a demo using
> DrScheme, and it was really cool!
>
> Also, I felt that Smalltalk had more attention than Ruby and other
> Python. This oopsla was a wonderful opportunity to meet people in real.
>
> Keep going Smalltalkers! We have cool things to show, and we have to
> show them!
> I would like to give big hands to Roel and Martin to have organized
> their events.
>
> Cheers,
> Alexandre
> -- 
> _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:
> Alexandre Bergel  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~bergel
> ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
>
>
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