[squeak-dev] Re: Sophie 2.0 ported to Java. Why?

Casimiro de Almeida Barreto casimiro.barreto at gmail.com
Thu Nov 5 18:11:30 UTC 2009


Em 05-11-2009 15:00, Andreas Raab escreveu:
> Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> "Unfortunately, despite a lot of interest among individual faculty
>> and a few small programs, the widespread institutional adoption
>> necessary to form a viable Sophie 1.0 sustaining community was not
>> happening - due in large part, our inquiries suggested, to lack of
>> interest in supporting an enterprise software application written in
>> Squeak. In the community whose support was most essential to Sophie's
>> survival, everyone wanted a language that was more widely known and
>> used; the largest single group of potential adopters wanted Java
>> [...] The Squeak contractors were understandably unhappy about the
>> move to Java, both because they lost the contract and because they
>> believe in Squeak and want to see it used more widely. We have the
>> greatest respect for their capabilities and their enthusiasm for
>> their community, but our responsibilities to our own institutions,
>> our community, and Mellon require us to give Sophie the greatest
>> possible chance of success."
>
> Great summary for an issue that I've seen come up several times. A
> couple of years back for example NASA evaluated Croquet for a project
> of theirs and decided against it for basically the same reasons: They
> needed people (other NASA scientists and engineers) who would build
> add-ons and extensions and requiring those to learn Squeak was
> perceived a hopeless exercise (and that isn't even mentioning the
> modularity issues Squeak has).
>
> When we faced the same issue again at Qwaq/Teleplace and this time we
> decided to "work around" it by providing the extension APIs in Python
> instead allowing direct access to Squeak. This has served us very well.
>
> This entirely line of arguments is one of the better reasons why
> "being popular" isn't such a bad thing :-)
>
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
>
>
From the marketing point of view, Sophie developers decision was
suicidal. They decided to release "yet another multimedia authoring
suite" in a much more savage commercial environment. They have my
sympathy but I see a clouded future for them.

Andreas, your observations are accurate & I agree with them.

About issues involving companies, while squeak and derivatives (Croquet)
keep themselves academic there will be little chance of commercial
adoption. Just let us put ourselves in the shoes of a decision maker:
Java is stable & fully documented & has loads of available developers
but if I decide to use squeak I won't have even a real reference book...
I'll be in the hands of a professional and if he decides to jump off the
project I'd better join him...

Obviously recent discussions regarding to the development of squeak and
the "spin-offs" didn't help much. In one hand they project an image of a
fractured community (and managers hate this kind of thing) and in the
other it reinforces the image of "a beta stuff" (meaning something with
specs really open & morphing/mutating development
boundaries/implemantations) and managers hate this too...

CdAB

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