[squeak-dev] Squeak vision

Juan Vuletich juan at jvuletich.org
Wed Jul 1 22:06:56 UTC 2009


Hi Ian,

Ian Trudel wrote:
> 2009/7/1 Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>:
>
> Hello Bert!
>
> It is truly beautiful to see your devotion to a vision. I respect
> that. The problem has never been eToys or even this vision.
>
> The overall considerations should remind us the extremely limited
> resources our community has, going smaller and smaller as people move
> to forks, and that it struggles attracting new members. Focusing on
> children at this point would be a terrible mistake, IMHO.
>
> Which part of limited resources don't you understand? Why can't we
> just have a great system rather than focusing on
> yet-another-killer-app? Let eToys be eToys and let Squeak be Squeak.
>
> Igor said, I think, that eToys can be a package on top of Squeak. It
> should be perfectly fine for everybody.
>   

You seem to think that the resources (i.e. programmer time) of this 
community are available for whatever the community or the leadership 
decides. This is completely wrong. The community has never hired Squeak 
programming time. Each of us is free to contribute (or not) to Squeak 
with code as we prefer. This also includes several companies, small, 
medium sized and big. Most contributors, both individuals and companies, 
do whatever is good / useful for them, and later contribute whatever 
might be useful for others.

This means that in order for your vision to become a reality, you need 
to work on it or pay somebody to work on it. For instance, Cuis exists 
because I wanted such a system, so I built it. If it is useful for 
others, great. If not, at least I did get what I wanted in the first place.

This is at the very heart of open source projects.

> Let me also speak from the heart, Bert. I have been introduced to
> Squeak around 2001. There is no contribution from me and I could never
> manage to do anything more than prototypes in Squeak. As I grow older,
> and the experience kicks in, I realize that several requirements have
> to be met in order to make it possible for me to use Squeak.
>   

Perhaps some of the forks suits your needs. If not, you'd better start 
learning how to make Squeak work for you (that's the whole idea of 
Smalltalk, right from the beginning). If you can not do it, and you 
can't pay for somebody to do what you need, and nobody is willing to do 
it, then perhaps Squeak is not for you.

> How come it is so easy to develop prototypes in Squeak but then it
> feels flat when it's time to do the real thing? Who can afford to
> develop not reusable prototypes nowadays? I certainly cannot! When
> it's time to wrap up Squeak into a product and deploy it, it turns out
> bitter. It always translates as real deep hard work and possibly more
> than the initial project.
>
> I dream about using Squeak for my projects. My bread and butter is
> about designing projects and I have thousands of pages about ideas
> over the last 13 years. I still hardly can fit Squeak in that. Squeak
> is a designer's dream! But it's a business nightmare. What the heck!
> Even the wonderful seaside wouldn't be an option, why should I retrain
> my staff who already know, say, Ruby, to use the unapproachable,
> weird, childish Squeak when there is Ruby on Rails? I don't have that
> kind of money to spare on a bet.
>   

If Ruby is better for you, what's the problem with using it?

> That is the reality of small businesses in North America. Thank you
> for your consideration.
>   

Are you saying that small businesses in USA can not use Squeak? My 
employer is a counter example of that idea. Perhaps you'd hire people 
here! There are many seasoned squeakers who charge reasonable rates, 
ready to work for you. I'm one of them.

> You want eToys? Get on board with eToys. The visionary people have
> left the building. The truth is that by leaving Squeak, the great
> minds have made a self admission, a confession, that Squeak was no
> longer a vision (but, perhaps, the concretization of a vision), and
> they have moved on another vision... something related to the far
> fetched future. We should understand what has happened, embrace the
> reality and also move on to something more tengible for us in the near
> future.
>   

Hehe. You're saying that the visionary people, the great minds have left 
Squeak? I'm in this community since 1997. I can tell you. Many great 
people left the community. But the vast majority of them are still here 
after 12 years!

> Finally, your contribution to Squeak has been noticed over the years
> and you're much more important to the community than I am. HOWEVER, I
> might never be able to seriously use Squeak and contribute to the
> community if I do not speak up right now... while the community is
> listening. It is my sincere wish to use Squeak on professional basis.
>
> Best regards,
> Ian

Then start doing it!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich



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