Most excellent, Benoît!


-C

***

      On 22 February 2023 at 21:51, Benoit St-Jean via Squeak-dev wrote:

 > Hello everyone,
 >
 > I think it's finally time for me to run for the Squeak Oversight Board
 > and give back to the wonderful Squeak/Smalltalk community!
 >
 > First, let me introduce myself.
 >
 > I've been following/loving Squeak since Dan Ingalls announced the birth
 > of this "new Smalltalk" in 1996!  Besides being a fan of Squeak since
 > day 1, I have been professionally a Smalltalker since 1992. I started
 > with ObjectWorks 4.0 and quickly moved to VisualWorks 2.5.  Since then,
 > I've been working mostly (and equally) with VisualAge and VisualWorks.
 > Did a few years of coding with VSE (plain) and VSE/PARTS as well.  Throw
 > in some Gemstone and some Glorp and some TOPLink and you get a good
 > picture of my professional background. In all occasions, I was lucky
 > enough to work on big projects with big databases (DB/2, Gemstone,
 > Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, Sybase & some MQSeries).
 >
 > Besides "Smalltalk at work", I enjoy other Smalltalks I haven't used
 > professionally: ObjectStudio, Dolphin, Cuis, Pharo and, obviously,
 > Squeak! And yes, I'm sometimes nostalgic of "The Smalltalk Report",
 > JOOP, BYTE and the "Dr. Dobb's Journal" magazines!  ;)
 >
 > I have a particular interest in:
 >
 > -Smalltalk communications with the "outside world", aka web services but
 > MOSTLY databases
 > -runtime image packaging mechanisms (i.e. VSE SLL, VW parcels, VAST
 > Runtime Packager, VW ImageStripper or building from a minimal image)
 > -modularity & modularization (no wonder, the first programming language
 > I learned was Modula-2!)
 > -development tools (Dolphin's IdeaSpace, Pharo's Playground, Refactoring
 > Browser, CodeCritics/SmallLint, GUI Builder, GToolkit)
 > -last, but not the least, Squeak's place on the current Smalltalk scene.
 >
 > I have been under the impression, in recent years, that Squeak was
 > trying to find its place between Cuis & Pharo and be everything to
 > everyone and nice/compatible with everything & everyone. But Cuis is
 > Cuis. And Pharo is Pharo.  And both forks have a clear path in mind but
 > I'm not sure Squeak knows what it is anymore and what it wants to be or
 > become. Add to that confusion, SqueakJS & PharoJS ! A few symptoms can
 > tell we're in a delicate place, starting with code compatibility and
 > code repositories!
 >
 > Repositories (SqueakMap, SqueakSource, SqueakSource3, SmalltalkHub) are
 > filled with versions alternating from Pharo to Squeak and back! We lost
 > Scratch. Major projects like Glorp, Magma, Seaside, Moose, Roassal,
 > Magritte, PolyMath and others seemed to have moved away from Squeak. So
 > I think we need to take a step back and ask ourselves a few
 > philosophical questions:
 >
 > -do we want to retain the original goal of being a
 > multimedia/education/experimenting development platform?
 > -do we want compatibility with other Smalltalks or just go our own way?
 > -can we target Raspberry Pi & cell phones as a possible and serious
 > Squeak platform?
 >
 > So I would like to run for the SOB 2023 because I am a user, a developer
 > and... a Smalltalk lover.
 >
 > P.S. Other non-Smalltalk related interests include: genetic algorithms,
 > chess, French literature (long story!), mathematics
 > P.P.S. I also like to code in Modula-2, Julia, R, Pascal, BASIC and
 > Oberon if that helps!
 > P.P.P.S. I'm on Windows and speak French : trouble ahead!  ;)

--
Craig Latta        :: research computer scientist ::
Black Page Digital ::     Berkeley, California    ::
663137D7940BF5C0AF ::    C1349FB2ADA32C4D5314CE   ::