2009/6/28 Ian Trudel <ian.trudel at gmail.com>:
> 2009/6/28 Göran Krampe <goran at krampe.se>:
>> Possibly true, but Smalltalk, Squeak, Etoys and even Croquet have been
>> around for quite some time now - and we haven't seen any real explosion yet.
>> Croquet was meant to "explode" but hasn't. So I am not holding my breath for
>> "the day Squeak gets popular" :)
>
> Sometimes being popular means doing normal things. Smalltalk is an
> unusual programming language (in the sense of mainstream) with an
> overly eccentric environment in Squeak. Then there are Croquet, Etoys,
> and so on. It's hardly a break through if it's only "more" eccentric
> than eccentric. Don't you think?
>
> The look-and-feel is designed for children. It's colourful, joyful, it
> bleeps and blink. How many professional developers are children? How
> many children are on this list? Enough with that already! Can we have
> a normal look-and-feel? A professional look-and-feel. =)

>From time to time I see someone claiming to fit Squeak aesthetics into
the cognitive style of the ordinary programmer-producer (or consumer)
of standard software, supporting this proposal under the authority of
the professionalism and the norm (which must be, of course, an
external jury). There is a famous example of uniformity that is
related to the Henry Ford's black Model-T mass production in 1908 :
"Everybody can get a car in the color he desires, provided it is
black". But today we have cars in many colors. So what happened?

Maybe some people understood that the economic forces are not the only
drivers of our monolithic societies. Maybe some individuals wants
what's called lifestyle, or express identification with a particular
subculture. Maybe this isn't news at all as totalitarian technocracy
trends exists since Industrial Revolution times (do you still write a
lot of handwritten letters?), and they are merged into a complex
framework of relationship with tools attacking culture, the role of
integration into a technopoly, economy of niches, etc.

Making a crude generalization, I think we have an interesting case
here. An unresolved tension between uniformity versus diversity. The
question seems to be if uniformity enables diversity at the last stage
in every individual's choice. Or this uniformity will restrict
individual freedom because as modern technology advances, the degree
of uniformity and regulation that restricts individual freedom
advances too?
(for the curious mind, in socioeconomic analisys the question if the
massive standarization of products will restrict us or give new
choices is still a bit unanswered, partially related with the goodness
of freedom of choice)

But here we have arguments from varied sources, I usually group them
in two subjective non-disjoint categories:

1) Sources (people) interested in selling or popularizing
2) People not interested in Smalltalk/Squeak popularization (or not so).

I've read some defending positions for 1), so I will make a support
for 2). One of the nice things in Squeak is, with all its defects,
still doesn't seem to be adapted to a marketing program (product
formulation, positioning, naming, advertising, distribution, etc),
with all the consequences of that: assuring participation into the
market because the strategic product planners will die if they don't
look so "professional" like its competitors, always trying to fit into
external unknown aesthetic patterns, today the colors are wrong,
tomorrow anything else, maybe one of those emerging usability
frameworks states as bad thing, etc.

To my view, Squeak doesn't fit very well with the production-line
programmer-worker.

Then, my vote is not positive for color uniformity in Squeak :)

Hernán

>
> Squeak is stuck in some time warp, where the surrounding world is on
> stand still. It should however consider that we are living in 2009 and
> have needs of 2009. We need a different usability, developer tools and
> we have different goals. For example, Squeak hardly support the
> requirements of my distributors, which makes it overly challenging for
> me to consider Squeak as our platform of development.
>
> Squeak doesn't need a killer app. It needs to be spruced up and put
> back on track. Honey moon is over, it's time to get real.
>
> Regards,
> Ian.
>
> --
> http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
>
>