Stef,

You seem to be making my point w/o realizing it.  There is indeed no need for struggle (with our would-be users), and the thought process that leads to the current struggles (the community's collective looking down its nostrils at GUI conventions) is (sad to say) based in elitism.  You say there is no need to struggle, but you combat every attempt to provide OPTIONAL behavior that (pardon the term) mainstream users have grown to expect.

I am not trying to tell you how to build your user interfaces.  I am telling you what my users will demand of anything I put in front of them, and I guarantee you that they are not unique.  I have no doubt that it is possible to improve on human/machine interfaces, but as JJ said, do it one step at a time, and start with what the users currently understand.

If the community cannot tolerate that, I fear it will never come to grips with the breaking changes (ANSI, stream exhaustion, underscores) that are necessary to make Squeak helpful to the Smalltalk community in general.  Put another way, I urge you (collectively) to stop bragging about Squeak's being a toy.  Turn it into a tool that can be used to make toys, other tools, or anything else - even boring mundane software if that's what a Smalltalker's customers want.  Again, the modularization for 3.10 is the time to do this stuff.  Squeak has immense potential; please realize it.

End of (very sincere) rant.

Bill





Stéphane Rollandin lecteur at zogotounga.net
Tue Feb 6 08:08:54 UTC 2007

Brad Fuller wrote:
>  Thus, it
> arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his
> opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him
> half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."
> 
> 1513 AD Machiavelli

this is very true of any truggle for power, like in politics, economy, 
and war.

but I fail to see any need for such struggle in computer science. Squeak 
is an open source project and as such does not have to fight anything. 
if we just make it as good as we can, according to our own elitist and 
knowledgeable idea of "good", then that is enough.

I do not see the point in having anyone to convince, nor any fight to 
figh, nor any product to sell. let's just be free of struggle, 
intelligent and creative. let's just build a beautiful piece of 
software, end even if it takes 50 years for its quality to be somewhat 
largely recognized (as it happens to Lisp nowadays), well what is the 
problem ?


Stef



Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029