>From: Todd Blanchard <tblanchard at mac.com>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: election details *PLEASE READ*
>Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:14:38 -0800
>
>The question was - What do you believe is the future of Smalltalk?   My 
>answer was from a social/market/adoption perspective - you seem to  have 
>taken it from a technical roadmap perspective.
>
>What I meant when I said other languages seem to be approaching  Smalltalk 
>is that they adopt more ST features all the time and the  prejudicial 
>barriers are dropping.  It is a fine time to win converts  and grow the 
>user base.  Consider how many people no longer think  garbage collection is 
>an intolerable drain on performance.  IOW, I  think the future of Smalltalk 
>is bright and that it can gain mind/ marketshare as a language.  So I see a 
>future of growing user base  and rising visibility.

This is exactly how I took your statement.  Though I can understand Andreas 
wanting to get it clarified.

>>Do we need to protect the pureness of Smalltalk?
>
>No, but we do need to protect the stability.  My platform - if you  
>bothered to go read it, is about making Squeak useful for making  
>commercial quality things.  http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5922

Purity?  For me personally, it depends on what is meant.  If you mean 
sticking to the blue book 100%, then no of course not.  But changes need to 
take us forward not backward.

Smalltalk is IMO the most productive environment there is, and that needs to 
be preserved.  So changes like, for example, trying to make the image file 
oriented instead of image oriented would be very negative in my mind.

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