[squeak-dev] The Pillars of Squeak

Germán Arduino garduino at gmail.com
Mon Jul 6 11:56:08 UTC 2009


Hi all:

2009/7/6 Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de>:
> it occurred to me that Squeak is really built around three
> fundamental pillars:
>
> * Minimalism.
> * Tools.
> * Education.
>
> Minimalism. I think we all agree that we love minimalistic, simple kernels
> and systems. I don't think any of us would disagree with that. Whether it's
> an embedded system, a little kernel image, or some self-contained bootstrap
> magic; we just all love and cherish self-contained little systems.
>
> Tools. It's what we use daily and it's one of the things that we're most
> proud of. The effectiveness of our tools, the speed with which they allow us
> to do almost magical things, the ability to simulate even complex
> interactions are all parts of the environment that I don't think anyone
> would give up on.



My comment about Tools is closely related to the Business one and is about
the lot of tools and changes (and incompatibilities) that were
emerging with the time.

I understand that any of us can develop its own tools, but also think that would
decide a set of tools to use on the "official" squeak and maintain its
use or, if
changes, then make it more "organically".

I means, by example, the different sort of packages of code (.cs, .sar, .mcz),
the different tools to deal with (changesets, CodeLoader, Monticello),
the tools developed
by Keith (LPF, Installer, etc), the different repositories (SqueakMap,
Squeaksource, Universes).

I think that all these things deserve a bit of order (Well, already
lot of discussions on the other
threads, but just to point).

>
> In addition to these fundamental pillars of Squeak I see three more areas
> that are of very wide interest but not universally shared:
>
> * Media.
> * Internet.
> * Business.
>

Is hard to me think why not universally shared. AFAIK exist a lot of
applications on Media and Internet, as many as in the other fields.

And, as you correctly point, Business is were the money is. As a small
independent developer, the business side is VERY important to me,
because I can not afford to use the language *X* to earn money and
Squeak only to hobbistic projects. And I think that is the position of
several people here. Alos I use other Smalltalks to specific
commercial projects, but I would love to use Squeak to all my
projects. That would permit a deeper dedication to Squeak, no only to
use it, else to contribute with it.

In summary, I think that the 6 areas pointed are importants, agree
with the Ralph comment about Minimalism and select my pov about that
Tools (and process) need some definitions and reordering.

Cheers.

-- 
Germán S. Arduino
http://www.arduinosoftware.com
http://germanarduino.blogspot.com



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