[squeak-dev] A Sad Day

giorgio ferraris giorgioferraris at elevensoft.it
Sat Aug 15 09:55:50 UTC 2020


if you go out of the commercial (and so more stable), Smalltalks, I think
Cuis Smalltalk could be a nice answer to simplicity, try to give a look.
They are maniacs about code reduction (less is more to the limit...)
Squeak and Pharo are interesting for the new features added, but you pay
the cost in term of complexity

ciao

giorgio

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 9:42 PM Vanessa Freudenberg <vanessa at codefrau.net>
wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 2:31 AM Marcel Taeumel <marcel.taeumel at hpi.de>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Trygve,
>>
>> I apologize for any misunderstandings here. I am not an English native
>> speaker. It was not my intent do accuse you of lying.
>>
>> However, there is a difference between a bug report and an
>> unsubstantiated rant. I did read your entire post "A Sad Day" as the
>> latter. Whose mistake that was, I cannot tell now. Neutral, objective bug
>> reports would read different, I suppose.
>>
>
> It was neither a bug report nor an unsubstantiated rant. It was a
> criticism of the complexity of all current Smalltalks. The few examples of
> unexpected complexity in Squeak that Trygve chose to mention are not the
> actual issue. No need to feel personally attacked.
>
> Having worked with a beautifully tiny system like Smalltalk-78, or even
> early versions of Squeak, the complexity in modern Squeak is staggering.
>
> Smalltalk used to be a system that can be fully understood by a single
> person - truly a personal computing system. That is no longer the case.
>
> All the functionality we added over the years comes at the price of
> complexity (not to mention speed). It makes the system hard to understand.
> It makes it hard to see the design principles. We have not found a way to
> eliminate, or at least hide, any of the complexity we introduced.
>
> I don't think there is a "solution" for this within the current system. We
> have accepted the complexity, and now we have to live with it. And we have
> to accept that that alienates people who are looking for simplicity and
> elegance.
>
> I am sad to see Trygve leave, but I do understand. He didn't even owe us
> an explanation. Thank you, Trygve!
>
> All the best,
> Vanessa
>
>
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