Explaining Ourselves (was Re: [squeak-dev] SmalltalkHub)

Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r at gmail.com
Thu Apr 7 21:12:14 UTC 2011


I want this too. Too many Rubyists haven't interacted with their history much. I know because I was among them. Hell, I was also into Obj-C and didn't know where my roots were. Someone had to shout at me over beers to get me to open up my eyes, he said "This stuff isn't new! Look at Smalltalk!"

Less than a year later I got to ship Squeak. It's a shame that there's so much in the way for new comers. Having to learn a whole IDE is bad enough, but having to give up the warm familiar SCM seems to have been a real deal breaker for folks I've pitched e.g. Seaside to. 

While I was compelled to learn by the mystery of this thirty year old system that did all my favorite programming tricks and then some, I think the obstacles are tall enough that a lot of people just pass us by.

In general I think "learning to play well with others" will make the difference between a halo effect around Ruby/Rails driving people into our community, and starving for people to run the Board. 

On Apr 7, 2011, at 1:38 PM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at angband.za.org> wrote:

> On 2011/04/07 21:13, Colin Putney wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Frank Shearar
>> <frank.shearar at angband.za.org>  wrote:
>> 
>>> *cough*. Me. OK, I want to be _able_ to. For instance, I'd like to be able
>>> to bang out a Smalltalk script as easily as I can a Ruby one, with all the
>>> interoperability that implies (piping to and from other utilities, for
>>> instance), and in particular, do so without pulling a 20-30MB image.
>> 
>> Why not just use Ruby? Ok, the syntax is a little baroque, but it's
>> basically Smalltalk in files.
> 
> Yes, but Ruby's also greasy.
> 
>>> The main thing is that time and again we waste our time writing our own
>>> implementations of things, when surely we have better things to do? (I can
>>> provide a long list... :) )
>> 
>> Is "Ruby" on the list?     :-P
> 
> Nah. I just want to be able to show colleagues that they can get the ease of using Ruby without all the gunk.
> 
> frank
> 



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