[squeak-dev] Re: Election 2008: Answers from Matthew

Klaus D. Witzel klaus.witzel at cobss.com
Thu Feb 28 11:21:19 UTC 2008


On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:43:21 +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On Feb 28, 2008, at 11:00 , Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:50:15 +0100, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>>> "Oscar" == Oscar Nierstrasz <oscar.nierstrasz at gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>> Oscar> Seriously though.  I consider this the most critical question  
>>> for the
>>> Oscar> Squeak Foundation.
>>>
>>> Oscar> Any ideas?
>>>
>>> I think he was spot on.  If you want Squeak to be taken seriously as a
>>> development platform, you need to find people like me who can take an  
>>> open
>>> source product and provide all the infrastructure around it (tutorials,
>>> courses, books, trainings), and find a way to be financially self- 
>>> supporting.
>>>
>>> For success in the marketplace, you need:
>>
>> *very* good points. I put the Squeak-based products under your lines;  
>> comments+corrections appreciated.
>>
>>> * a stable usable working product
>>
>> EToys, Seaside, Aida, Croquet, Scratch, Plopp, Sophie, but not Squeak?
>
> The problem is that you have to become a Squeak expert on your own  
> before you could confidently start such a project. It's virtually  
> guaranteed that you will run into issues with Squeak in any serious  
> project.

I fully agree. I employ developers for our projects for some decades now;  
many of them after they have demonstrated their talent during an  
internship; and any of them only if my teams have reviewed a work sample  
of the candidate. When new team member has no or lack of experience with  
parts of the project's tool-chain, newbee runs into issues in the project,  
virtually guaranteed.

> It takes a lot of experience to work around all the quirks.

Sure. OT: so they tend to invent "their" framework in which their  
project's working experience is accumulated and can be maintained, in  
order to become more productive.

> Squeak already is a very powerful tool for experts, but for regular  
> users (like, someone not subscribed to squeak-dev) there really are too  
> many obstacles to be productive.
>
> - Bert -
>
>





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