On Nov 6, 2007 5:52 AM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>
> Mmm, I'm not sure I could agree with that really. I'd like somewhat
> wider adoption if only so as to provide a wider pool of interesting
> employment possibilities, at least for the next 10 years or so. It
> would be nice to retire without ever having to stoop to a lesser
> language.

Oops, I see I mis-quoted you.  "Somewhat wider adoption" I can
certainly agree on.  I think what we should strive for is the Haskell
aproach of getting the best people we can.  As you and Colin
mentioned, we need effective people.  The guys who churn out crappy
code in <insert inferior language here> are no help for us, they just
waste our time asking for things that we already have better solutions
for.

> Well put. One problem we have at the moment is being effective. There
> are enough versions of Smalltalk to be quite awkwardly divisive;
> consider the diversionary effort that seems to be going into buying
> out Dolphin.

Well, the thing with Dolphin is that it was by far the most beautiful
Smalltalk on Windows.  I don't think the buyout is so much about
keeping it out there as a platform, as it is about having the write to
take the GUI code and move it to e.g. Squeak.  Dolphin was far
superior to any system I have ever seen for building GUI's and that's
what people don't want to see lost.

> Happily a lot of us are
> gainfully employed right now (which amazes me considering the
> dreadful state of the US economy, but there you are) and that means -
> at least in my case - very little time to spend on community projects.

Yes, that is a problem.  We need to make a business to sell to
google/microsoft/who ever so we can become financially independent. :)