3.9 Oddities

> Fortunately the discussion isn't closed :-) I agree that it is not  
> a good thing for the official release of Squeak to be displaying  
> boxes - even for many(most?) existing Squeakers.

Me too.
Now we tried to recompile all the code and we failed. So this will be  
for the next one.

> However if people doing all the hard work of getting this out  
> strongly disagree, hopefully they will find it reasonable to place  
> a prominent notice/tip/explanation about end of line handling so  
> that people are aware. Surely the time to do that will be much  
> smaller than the time that will be eaten up in reasonable questions  
> from people who didn't know. This is not an issue that will go away  
> quietly.

Stef

Are you saying that squeak being open source/free is a bad thing?  Smalltalk
probably would
have broke into the market a lot sooner if it had not cost to program in it.
  Squeak may wind
up being the single most important thing in the history of smalltalk before
all is said and done.

One just has to remember Apple vs. Microsoft.  Apple said "write anything
you want on our
system but we get royalties on it".  Microsoft said "write anything you
want, no royalty costs
from us".  One of those two companies almost went extinct, the other
contains a couple of
guys who show up on the "world's richest people" list.

Not sure :) about the reference to Apple ;)

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 08:57:59 +0200, J J wrote:

> ... Squeak may wind
> up being the single most important thing in the history of smalltalk  
> before all is said and done.

Hear, hear ! :-)

J J wrote:
>> No tut-tut. Remember, we weren't vendors. You have to look at this
>> (and other decisions) in relation to the big fish we were trying to
>> fry (which was NOT to build a "free Smalltalk" even though that's what
>> it unfortunately degenerated to).
>
> Are you saying that squeak being open source/free is a bad thing?  

No, I'm saying that we failed to achieve what we were aiming for. Squeak
being open and free is a very good thing but I'd rather have a media
authoring tool used by a huge number of kids than a "free Smalltalk"
used by a diminishingly small number of programmers.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Ah, I see.  But do you think the number of developers using it is
diminishing?  I would think it is currently on the rise.  At least for a
while.

All,

I normally stay out of these conversations because doing is much more
important then talking (I like the tag that someone has that says: "talk
less, do more" or something like that)

It seems to me that there are a number of people that have put significant
time into Smalltalk that are disillusioned by the progress that has been
made by other languages.  (Including me, I've been doing Smalltalk for 10
years, which is not much by some people's standards but is a significant
investment from where I sit)

My opinion for what it is worth is that there has been considerable support
for Smalltalk, and many opportunities for the language in the past the have
not panned out.  Much of that was due to the high cost of entry, and the
high cost of support and maintenance.

Although Squeak has been around for a while now it is not as mature as other
Smalltalk projects.  There is a lot that still needs to be done.  I know a
lot of people have made suggestions about what should be done (including
me), and many people have countered with lots of reasons why they are not
done.  As a community, if we want to help squeak grow up, we need to find a
way to move past this stage of development (call it a transition from a paid
project run by very talented visionaries, to a community run development
platform [that could still be used as a "media authoring tool used by a huge
number of kids"]).  I believe that even though it appears that the community
is quite small compared to others, we can accomplish a lot with proper
organization and commitment.  (Look at Seaside as an example)

So my question for the community is this: Can we start a process where we
decide which pieces that the community needs, and find a way to help each
other achieve those goals.  Can we move past this "Scratch your own itch"
mentality to a more altruistic, "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"
philosophy?

My suggestion is for us to start a proper discussion about what really needs
to change, and for us to start planning those changes.  We need to put a
process behind what we are doing and try to commit to those changes.  We
need a real foundation, real projects, real support, and real progress.
Once we organize ourselves then we can talk about increasing the size of our
community.

Ron Teitelbaum
President / Principal Software Engineer
US Medical Record Specialists
[hidden email]

[Don't bury me where the hills are green,
where the water runs cold,
or next to a running stream.

Don't bury me where the flowers bloom,
where the trees are old,
or next to my comfy room,

Don't take me from my nice warm bed,
And box me up,
Remember what I said.

Don't bury me, cause I'm not dead.]

> No, I'm saying that we failed to achieve what we were aiming
> for. Squeak being open and free is a very good thing but I'd
> rather have a media authoring tool used by a huge number of
> kids than a "free Smalltalk"
> used by a diminishingly small number of programmers.
>
> Cheers,
>    - Andreas

I'd rather see it become a better tool for real programmers and less of a
tool for kids, and I also think the number of programmers is on the rise.

Well I am certainly on board.  Once I got a little further with a few things
I was
planning to attack the documentation situation, but really the first step
needs to
be the organization, etc. you describe.


>Ron Teitelbaum
>President / Principal Software Engineer
>US Medical Record Specialists
>[hidden email]

On 2006 September 11 08:11, Andreas Raab wrote:
> J J wrote:
> >> No tut-tut. Remember, we weren't vendors. You have to look at this
> >> (and other decisions) in relation to the big fish we were trying to
> >> fry (which was NOT to build a "free Smalltalk" even though that's what
> >> it unfortunately degenerated to).
> >
> > Are you saying that squeak being open source/free is a bad thing?
>


> No, I'm saying that we failed to achieve what we were aiming for. Squeak
> being open and free is a very good thing but I'd rather have a media
> authoring tool used by a huge number of kids

Perhaps did not failed too badly! - I wanted to mention there must be some
number of kids, who do get to playing with Squeak even without school and
teachers telling them about it. I have some empirical evidence for it :) . A
son of my friend (and the son's friend, they are about 12) apparently found
and downloaded Squeak, built projects with it, even put together a few games
so far. When I asked him if they knew about Squeak because of school, he said
no, noone in school told them about Squeak. So there is some grassroot
movement :)

Which brings me to another idea I wanted to mention for a while: While
steering Squeak as a tool for science and math education, and media
playground is good, creating games is something most kids will want to do
"naturally" (maybe that should be something like "current culturally"), and
interactive games must be a good gateway to Squeak. Yet until recently (last
year?), there was no easy way for a Morph to be moved by keyboard arrow,
which is a known and simple, although a bit backwards way of interaction;
also apart from the (beautiful) car track example there are no other
"visible" examples kids could use to start writing simple games. I just
wanted to say, creating interactive games seems a good motivator for children
to use Squeak.

Milan

> than a "free Smalltalk"
> used by a diminishingly small number of programmers.
>
> Cheers,
>    - Andreas

Milan Zimmermann puso en su mail :
Milan:
As a game build in Squeak fan, I could be online to help any kid in any
place.
Only I don't know how be in touch with they.
My zone time is 09:00 to 20:00 GMT (roughly) .
I suppose what a IRC "squeakkids" could be created ?

Edgar




       
       
               
__________________________________________________
Preguntá. Respondé. Descubrí.
Todo lo que querías saber, y lo que ni imaginabas,
está en Yahoo! Respuestas (Beta).
¡Probalo ya!
http://www.yahoo.com.ar/respuestas

On 2006 October 6 05:08, Edgar J. De Cleene wrote:
Hi Edgar,

That may be good idea, although I was more or less thinking about simple games
that would be put online perhaps along with simple tutorials; I think at
certain age kids prefer to play with software themselves without guidance :)

Milan