OT - Squeak and the Broader Software Community

Milan Zimmermann milan.zimmermann at sympatico.ca
Fri Jul 7 20:26:17 UTC 2006


On 2006 July 7 14:58, Dan Shafer wrote:
<snip>
> Why, after 30 years, does Squeak still appear to be a non-standard,
> almost toy-like user experience in the IDE? Is it the case that
> changing that would be far too complex to undertake? 

Dan,

Personally I believe Tweak can change that. I look at what is in Tweak now, 
under CProjectBuilder->Widgets, there are buttons (including image button), 
fields, dropdown, list, area, tree, file open/save dialog, user dialog, even 
text editor - all that UI stuff is already there probably without that being 
the major goal of Tweak. (I realize, in general, many want os-native widgets 
but I think it is slowly shifting to the easy portability of UI with native 
L&F)

In brief, to me, Tweak is an absolute marvel that would go a long way to solve 
what you discuss. 

I believe large part of the problem is marketing, exposing Squeak so enough 
people can at least in some way make a living of it, then stuff like this 
will happen - example, Eclipse, (although open source) the developement is 
almost completely funded by IBM, people doing boring bug fixes and major 
developement are often funded etc. Linux did not move into mainstream until 
similar things happened.

Milan


> Or is it that 
> the community of Squeak users just isn't largely motivated to worry
> about this subject? Or is the absence of an economic incentive the
> problem? Or IS there a problem?
>
> Thanks for any wisdom you can share. This is one of the two big
> objections I *always* get when I recommend someone look at Squeak as
> a possible solution to a problem for which it appears to me to be
> ideally suited linguistically and architecturally.
>
> -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
> -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
> Dan Shafer
> Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
> "Looking at technology from every angle"



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