A formal presentation to the list
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My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and reflections. It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal development system. Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. But that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the system is invaluable. I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by me, so knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And build from there. Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. Best regards Nacho
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Welcome aboard Nacho! I also felt identified with the motivations behind Cuis (that was the central part of my talk in Smalltalks 2013 in past October in Rosario).
And yes, we need more packages in Cuis, but all is matter of time and more people willing to help. Indeed I neither can to develop all the time in Cuis, I need to work also in other environments to pay the bills (as most of us) but Cuis remains as a nice, cozy place where come back when one is tired of the common, unpractical languages :), to experiment with own designs. BTW: In SqueakRos we also speak about Cuis in spanish, just in case you are interested..... 2013/12/7 nacho <[hidden email]> My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in Saludos / Regards,
Germán Arduino www.arduinosoftware.com _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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In reply to this post by nacho
On Sat, 7 Dec 2013 05:53:08 -0800 (PST)
nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in > Buenos Aires, Argentina. Welcome to the Cuis community! > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by me, so > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. I am Ken Dickey, working from Whidbey Island in Washington state in the US (Estados Unidos). I am working on different ways to build things -- doing explorations to try to make it easier / more direct to construct using Cuis. One of my goals, when I get time, is to use the StyledTextEditor to document (with words and pictures & code) how to discover Cuis -- how to learn what is there and try things out. If we can do this, we will have Cuis documented in Cuis and everybody wins. We are not there yet, but getting closer to being able to do this. This is my wish, (one of many) -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by nacho
Welcome Nacho
You mention that you work in a company where most of the software is developed by you. Then this presentation by Germán Arduino is probably of interest for you http://www.slideshare.net/garduino1/smalltalk-and-microisvs Citation: Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual. [1] Design Principles Behind Smalltalk - Dan Ingalls However this mostly applies to the core and in addition there are now quite a number of libraries available for Cuis with a simple loader mechanism. It is not strictly necessary to understand everything. One of the strong points of Cuis is that a single person --- Juan Vuletich --- has cleaned up the core. And a fully working core image with less than 500 classes is the published artifact. A 'Renaissance' approach as he describes in his slides on Smalltalks 2013. There are no longer 13 versions of GUI buttons with duplicate functions but just 3. Regards Hannes On 12/7/13, nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and > reflections. > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal > development system. > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. But > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the system is > invaluable. > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by me, > so > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And build > from > there. > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. > Best regards > Nacho _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by nacho
Hi Nacho,
Welcome to our community! I started Cuis some years ago as a personal project. Today I'm delighted to be part of a growing community of people sharing some desires for our Dynabook environment. I also live in Buenos Aires, so we can meet anytime. The same goes for all of you folks. If you live in Buenos Aires, or happen to be around at some time, chime in and we'll organize a meeting, to talk about Smalltalk or whatever coffee or beer brings up. Cheers, Juan Vuletich On 12/7/2013 10:53 AM, nacho wrote: > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and reflections. > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal > development system. > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. But > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the system is > invaluable. > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by me, so > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And build from > there. > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. > Best regards > Nacho > > > > > > ----- > Nacho > Smalltalker apprentice. > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > -- > View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/A-formal-presentation-to-the-list-tp4728293.html > Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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In reply to this post by Hannes Hirzel
"One of my goals, when I get time, is to use the StyledTextEditor to document (with words and pictures & code) how to discover Cuis -- how to learn what is there and try things out. "
This is a VERY Smalltalkish approach indeed. :P Cuis documented in Cuis. Sounds really great! Let me know when you have something to see, I'm really interested. Thanks in advance. Best, Nacho
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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On Mon, 9 Dec 2013 06:14:42 -0800 (PST)
nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: KenD>> >> "One of my goals, when I get time, is to use the StyledTextEditor to document >> (with words and pictures & code) how to discover Cuis -- how to learn what >> is there and try things out. " > This is a VERY Smalltalkish approach indeed. :P Cuis documented in Cuis. > Sounds really great! > Let me know when you have something to see, I'm really interested. It will be a while yet. I need to learn more myself! But the basic idea is "map and compass" -- how do I find my way around. What are the basic landmarks. How to plot a course to get from here to there. Beyond "Smalltalk by Example" (language use) to "How do I learn enough to do simple projects?". Drag 'n Drop, morph Layouts, Color, Events, ... My idea for chapters is to pick an area to explore, find an interesting little project which shows/demonstrates what the main ideas are, then summarize. In writing, I plan to start with a summary, then think of a project (something to build in Cuis) which covers the salients/interesting-bits, then reverse this. Present the "cool project", then the summary. I learn best by example. If I were just reading text, my eyes would glaze over. But seeing something come together... Then I am ready to read more on "how to do it" and try new things out. Confidence to be able to look around the system to find things, build new stuff or make changes reliably. This "beyond the basics" is something I think we need. With a bit of work we could make it easy to do screen captures and make code samples live ("do it" button, perhaps live embedded morphs). This has been done before, but we could keep it alive. Dynabook indeed! Of course, I have to learn more to be able do this -- and write a bit of code. But what a fun project !!! -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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:)
Cheers, Juan Vuletich On 12/9/2013 1:46 PM, Ken Dickey wrote: > On Mon, 9 Dec 2013 06:14:42 -0800 (PST) > nacho<[hidden email]> wrote: > KenD>> >>> "One of my goals, when I get time, is to use the StyledTextEditor to document >>> (with words and pictures& code) how to discover Cuis -- how to learn what >>> is there and try things out. " >> This is a VERY Smalltalkish approach indeed. :P Cuis documented in Cuis. >> Sounds really great! >> Let me know when you have something to see, I'm really interested. > It will be a while yet. I need to learn more myself! > > But the basic idea is "map and compass" -- how do I find my way around. What are the basic landmarks. How to plot a course to get from here to there. > > Beyond "Smalltalk by Example" (language use) to "How do I learn enough to do simple projects?". Drag 'n Drop, morph Layouts, Color, Events, ... > > My idea for chapters is to pick an area to explore, find an interesting little project which shows/demonstrates what the main ideas are, then summarize. > > In writing, I plan to start with a summary, then think of a project (something to build in Cuis) which covers the salients/interesting-bits, then reverse this. Present the "cool project", then the summary. > > I learn best by example. If I were just reading text, my eyes would glaze over. But seeing something come together... Then I am ready to read more on "how to do it" and try new things out. > > Confidence to be able to look around the system to find things, build new stuff or make changes reliably. This "beyond the basics" is something I think we need. > > With a bit of work we could make it easy to do screen captures and make code samples live ("do it" button, perhaps live embedded morphs). This has been done before, but we could keep it alive. > > Dynabook indeed! > > > Of course, I have to learn more to be able do this -- and write a bit of code. > > But what a fun project !!! > > -KenD > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by nacho
Good to meet you! I'm in Seattle, Washington in the USA. Not terribly far from Ken as it happens.
I did the main work around visual themes in Cuis, the original taskbar (which has since been replaced with something much nicer) and an odd little thing for moving assets in and out of the image called ContentPack. I also did some work to update our icons. In the future I look forward to contributing to the Morphic 3 effort, and to help continue Juan's earlier work with mobile devices. I was the second committer to Cuis (after Juan) and I must say that it's been a real joy to watch the community grow. It's a wonderful system. I think probably the strongest evidence that Juan's approach has been successful is that we were able to actually add features at the same time as removing classes and methods. Having a smaller, more manageable core opens up possibilities like this. Another part of this which is important to me is the idea that "the code is the curriculum," that the best way to make a complex system easy to understand and learn is to include only the highest quality code we can imagine, and avoid unnecessary complexity (or "complication") wherever possible. Glad to have you on the list, Ignacio! --Casey > On Dec 7, 2013, at 5:53 AM, nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: > > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live in > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and reflections. > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal > development system. > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. But > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the system is > invaluable. > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by me, so > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And build from > there. > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. > Best regards > Nacho > > > > > > ----- > Nacho > Smalltalker apprentice. > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > -- > View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/A-formal-presentation-to-the-list-tp4728293.html > Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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Thank you, all of you for your warm welcome. I totally agree with you. Simplicity is nothing but one side of the coin, being the other code quality. It's impossible to achieve a certain degree of simplicity and elegance without good code quality.
Once thing I'm curious is about the evolution of Cuis, how was developed. In squeak.org says that it's a fork of Squeak. But closely inspecting Cuis, it dawn on me that may be it was build from scratch. It seems that unloading, correcting, fixing and shrinking Cuis is much more time consuming than -using Squeak as a guide- build from zero.
I've taken a look at Squeak 1.3 or 1.2 and it was much simpler than let's say 3.8 or 4.4 which is impossible to follow. Pharo has lots of classes too, but everything is very good organized and once you know what is the purpose of package X, it's easy to concentrate on those that matter for the project being developed. Though IMHO I really prefer "extreme modularity" just the kernel. If you need something more, then just loaded, only those things needed for a project.
Is there some guide or tutorial on morphic on Cuis? Thanks in advance Nacho Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:00 AM, Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote: Good to meet you! I'm in Seattle, Washington in the USA. Not terribly far from Ken as it happens. _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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On 11 December 2013 11:16, Ignacio Matías Sniechowski
<[hidden email]> wrote: > Thank you, all of you for your warm welcome. > I totally agree with you. Simplicity is nothing but one side of the coin, > being the other code quality. It's impossible to achieve a certain degree of > simplicity and elegance without good code quality. > Once thing I'm curious is about the evolution of Cuis, how was developed. In > squeak.org says that it's a fork of Squeak. But closely inspecting Cuis, it > dawn on me that may be it was build from scratch. It seems that unloading, > correcting, fixing and shrinking Cuis is much more time consuming than > -using Squeak as a guide- build from zero. > I've taken a look at Squeak 1.3 or 1.2 and it was much simpler than let's > say 3.8 or 4.4 which is impossible to follow. Just for the record, I hope that 4.5 will be the start of a long trend of "getting better". We already started cleaning up messes in 4.4, and 4.5 has made a good start in addressing the inter-package complexities (that Pharo is now starting to get to grips with too). frank > Pharo has lots of classes too, > but everything is very good organized and once you know what is the purpose > of package X, it's easy to concentrate on those that matter for the project > being developed. Though IMHO I really prefer "extreme modularity" just the > kernel. This kind of "extreme modularity" is a goal both of the Pharo and the Squeak communities. It's my hope that not too long from now, the differences between Squeak, Pharo and Cuis will be much less, and that we'll see applications and libraries freely moving between the various communities. frank > If you need something more, then just loaded, only those things > needed for a project. > Is there some guide or tutorial on morphic on Cuis? > Thanks in advance > Nacho > > > Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA > > > > > > > > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:00 AM, Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> > wrote: >> >> Good to meet you! I'm in Seattle, Washington in the USA. Not terribly far >> from Ken as it happens. >> >> I did the main work around visual themes in Cuis, the original taskbar >> (which has since been replaced with something much nicer) and an odd little >> thing for moving assets in and out of the image called ContentPack. I also >> did some work to update our icons. >> >> In the future I look forward to contributing to the Morphic 3 effort, and >> to help continue Juan's earlier work with mobile devices. >> >> I was the second committer to Cuis (after Juan) and I must say that it's >> been a real joy to watch the community grow. >> >> It's a wonderful system. I think probably the strongest evidence that >> Juan's approach has been successful is that we were able to actually add >> features at the same time as removing classes and methods. Having a smaller, >> more manageable core opens up possibilities like this. >> >> Another part of this which is important to me is the idea that "the code >> is the curriculum," that the best way to make a complex system easy to >> understand and learn is to include only the highest quality code we can >> imagine, and avoid unnecessary complexity (or "complication") wherever >> possible. >> >> Glad to have you on the list, Ignacio! >> >> --Casey >> >> > On Dec 7, 2013, at 5:53 AM, nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: >> > >> > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live >> > in >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. >> > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and >> > reflections. >> > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal >> > development system. >> > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. >> > But >> > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the system >> > is >> > invaluable. >> > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by >> > me, so >> > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And build >> > from >> > there. >> > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. >> > Best regards >> > Nacho >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > ----- >> > Nacho >> > Smalltalker apprentice. >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> > -- >> > View this message in context: >> > http://forum.world.st/A-formal-presentation-to-the-list-tp4728293.html >> > Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Cuis mailing list >> > [hidden email] >> > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cuis mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by nacho
Hi Nacho,
(inline) > Thank you, all of you for your warm welcome. > I totally agree with you. Simplicity is nothing but one side of the coin, > being the other code quality. It's impossible to achieve a certain degree > of simplicity and elegance without good code quality. > Once thing I'm curious is about the evolution of Cuis, how was developed. > In squeak.org says that it's a fork of Squeak. But closely inspecting > Cuis, > it dawn on me that may be it was build from scratch. It seems that > unloading, correcting, fixing and shrinking Cuis is much more time > consuming than -using Squeak as a guide- build from zero. This is a great question. Which approach is better? Well, before Cuis, I've been using Smalltalk-80 derivatives for a long time. Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, the Xerox Learning Research Group, Squeak Central, they are my heroes. It never occurred to me that I could build something as good as Smalltalk-80 by myself from scratch! Additionally, I started this by myself, in my free time, without any financial support. I wouldn't dare to start from scratch, because I wasn't sure at all I would have enough time and knowledge to bring it to a usable state. So, the approach was to find an area of the system that I find difficult, and while trying to understand it, clean it, so it would be easier to understand in the future. Rinse and repeat. Bounded work, usually between one week and one month in my free time. The advantages of this approach have been: - I could learn as I go. I didn't have to know everything about Smalltalk-80 before starting. - I always have a working system, since day one. If development stops for whatever reason, the result is the best Cuis up to that moment. - It is possible to adopt the really important fixes and enhancements done at Squeak. For example, Closures and Cog compatibility, enhancements and fixes to Compiler and stuff, many fixes to numerics stuff, etc. But you are right, a properly staffed and financed team, starting from scratch, could have done in much quicker :) > I've taken a look at Squeak 1.3 or 1.2 and it was much simpler than let's > say 3.8 or 4.4 which is impossible to follow. Cuis was forked from Squeak 3.7, when 3.8 was already out, and 3.9 was in the works. 3.8 added support for Unicode. I think Unicode is important, but I don't agree with the approach taken. Unicode support required so many deep changes that I thought it would be easier to fork before that, and port later useful fixes, than to remove Unicode from the image. Removing Etoys, MVC and many other things allowed me to bring the image back to 1.3 size, enabling evolution, and a deep redesign the internals of Morphic, etc. Cheers, Juan Vuletich > Pharo has lots of classes > too, but everything is very good organized and once you know what is the > purpose of package X, it's easy to concentrate on those that matter for > the > project being developed. Though IMHO I really prefer "extreme modularity" > just the kernel. If you need something more, then just loaded, only those > things needed for a project. > Is there some guide or tutorial on morphic on Cuis? > Thanks in advance > Nacho > > > > *Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA* > > > > > > > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:00 AM, Casey Ransberger > <[hidden email]>wrote: > >> Good to meet you! I'm in Seattle, Washington in the USA. Not terribly >> far >> from Ken as it happens. >> >> I did the main work around visual themes in Cuis, the original taskbar >> (which has since been replaced with something much nicer) and an odd >> little >> thing for moving assets in and out of the image called ContentPack. I >> also >> did some work to update our icons. >> >> In the future I look forward to contributing to the Morphic 3 effort, >> and >> to help continue Juan's earlier work with mobile devices. >> >> I was the second committer to Cuis (after Juan) and I must say that it's >> been a real joy to watch the community grow. >> >> It's a wonderful system. I think probably the strongest evidence that >> Juan's approach has been successful is that we were able to actually add >> features at the same time as removing classes and methods. Having a >> smaller, more manageable core opens up possibilities like this. >> >> Another part of this which is important to me is the idea that "the code >> is the curriculum," that the best way to make a complex system easy to >> understand and learn is to include only the highest quality code we can >> imagine, and avoid unnecessary complexity (or "complication") wherever >> possible. >> >> Glad to have you on the list, Ignacio! >> >> --Casey >> >> > On Dec 7, 2013, at 5:53 AM, nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: >> > >> > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I live >> in >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. >> > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and >> reflections. >> > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and personal >> > development system. >> > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, etc. >> But >> > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the >> system >> is >> > invaluable. >> > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by >> me, so >> > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And >> build >> from >> > there. >> > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. >> > Best regards >> > Nacho >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > ----- >> > Nacho >> > Smalltalker apprentice. >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> > -- >> > View this message in context: >> http://forum.world.st/A-formal-presentation-to-the-list-tp4728293.html >> > Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Cuis mailing list >> > [hidden email] >> > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cuis mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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In reply to this post by Frank Shearar-3
Frank,
Nice to meet you. Thanks for your clarifications. As I am new to Squeak/Pharo/Cuis, I don't know how they evolved. But I guess that -perhaps- one lesson to learn is what Juan says; sometimes as the system grows in complexity is hard to avoid over cluttered images and thus a lot of stuff there becomes legacy code as it's very difficult to track changes and maintain it. That's why I, personally, think that having a sound, simple, fast, and elegant kernel where "less is more" is the rule, is a very good point to start building on.
Personal mastery is better achieved if one understands all the basic kernel and then ventures on grasping other packages that may suit some other needs. For instance, I think I can manage to know well and deep something like 500 classes. On the other hand, I'm almost pretty sure that I will miss a lot if a system has 3000. But that's how it works for me, I know that other people are able to grasp a whopping number like in Cincom ST.
I wish I could have the time to master a system like that, unfortunately it's not my case. My first encounter was with Pharo, then I took a look at Squeak and I felt lost there, Nebraska, eToys, Universe an overloaded Morphic. Imagine that for me, even Pharo is a complex system... but its complexity is handled in a way that with sometime I know what stuff matters for me and what not, and it seems it is advancing fast to gain a great deal of extra modularity - even the Browser will be unloadable. Also it has some amazing packages like Roassal, Moose..., a very good looking UI and full featured developer tools. I'm confident that Pharo developers will manage to not only maintain but increase its modularity. I also hope that Squeak continues advancing! I will take a look at 4.5 -it's already released?.
Of course I'm with you that in the future the ideal would be that all packages could be loaded in Cuis Pharo Squeak with minor modifications. Thanks again and best regards Nacho Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Frank Shearar <[hidden email]> wrote: On 11 December 2013 11:16, Ignacio Matías Sniechowski _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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In reply to this post by Juan Vuletich-4
Juan, Very interesting indeed. You should write this stuff :). Honestly, at least for me. Thanks for sharing. Best regards Nacho Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 9:43 AM, <[hidden email]> wrote: Hi Nacho, _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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There's another aspect to the rewrite vs. refactor dilemma. Often times when doing a scratch rewrite of something originally written by someone else, one end up making many of the same mistakes in the original design, as well as new mistakes of one's own; in other words, history is important. For all its ups and downs, Smalltalk-80 was one of the most well thought out systems ever devised. Before it was released, the design was scrapped several times as the Learning Research Group studied their own artifacts. What I'm getting at with all of this is, there are few people IMHO who are generally qualified to build a system that's better over all for all involved than the people who laid the foundation for the work that the various direct descendants of ST-80 now continue. It's usually more affordable to take a great thing and make it better than it was before than to create something truly great from whole cloth, from scratch. But enough with me and my philosophy! Because sometimes "burning the disk packs" and starting from scratch is still the best thing to do, especially when one is looking for the new "blue plane," or in other words, a new paradigm. Good examples of scratch-built systems which learned things from Smalltalk include Self, the Lively Kernel, and most recently VPRI's Frank system.
_______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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Casey, I agree with you. When I said built from scratch I meant...basing it on Squeak, the blue book, etc. I'm interested in the Lively Kernel and Frank's stuff, would you point me to them? I'm intrigued.
Thanks for sharing, this conversation is getting interesting. Best regards! Nacho Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote:
_______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
Nacho
Smalltalker apprentice.
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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The Frank system (which should not be confused with the Frank on this list!) is being built as a part of a research project at Viewpoints Research Institute. Their front page is a good starting point. The writings page is the most fun and is one click away from there. The Lively Kernel is a project that implements the Smalltalk system architecture in Javascript. Self was originally intended as "Smalltalk 2.0" but ended up being decidedly not-Smalltalk in the end. It was the first object system to use prototypal inheritance and had an influence on Javascript. The Morphic system we use in Squeak (et al) was first implemented in Self.
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Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by nacho
On 11 December 2013 13:37, Ignacio Matías Sniechowski
<[hidden email]> wrote: > Frank, > Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too :) > Thanks for your clarifications. As I am new to Squeak/Pharo/Cuis, I don't > know how they evolved. But I guess that -perhaps- one lesson to learn is > what Juan says; sometimes as the system grows in complexity is hard to avoid > over cluttered images and thus a lot of stuff there becomes legacy code as > it's very difficult to track changes and maintain it. That's why I, > personally, think that having a sound, simple, fast, and elegant kernel > where "less is more" is the rule, is a very good point to start building on. Agreed. Mainly, Pharo and Squeak got into the mess we have today because * there wasn't sufficient review of new additions * it's very hard to _finish_ things, so people often half-fixed an issue, or half-completed a rewrite, leaving two implementations of a thing in the image * Smalltalk's all-objects-in-one-big-pot meant that noone had to face modularity issues. This last point means two things: it was (and is) very easy to create a dependency between two packages without realising it, and also it's very easy to create cyclic dependencies between things, so that you can no longer bootstrap the system. > Personal mastery is better achieved if one understands all the basic kernel > and then ventures on grasping other packages that may suit some other needs. > For instance, I think I can manage to know well and deep something like 500 > classes. On the other hand, I'm almost pretty sure that I will miss a lot if > a system has 3000. But that's how it works for me, I know that other people > are able to grasp a whopping number like in Cincom ST. > I wish I could have the time to master a system like that, unfortunately > it's not my case. > My first encounter was with Pharo, then I took a look at Squeak and I felt > lost there, Nebraska, eToys, Universe an overloaded Morphic. Imagine that > for me, even Pharo is a complex system... but its complexity is handled in a > way that with sometime I know what stuff matters for me and what not, and it > seems it is advancing fast to gain a great deal of extra modularity - even > the Browser will be unloadable. Also it has some amazing packages like > Roassal, Moose..., a very good looking UI and full featured developer tools. > I'm confident that Pharo developers will manage to not only maintain but > increase its modularity. The Pharo guys have done an enormous amount of work, and they have probably the most resources available of all the open source Smalltalks. They even have paid full-time devs, which is very nice. As far as complexity goes, I suspect that Pharo are not any simpler than Squeak. While they have cleaned up many nasty aspects of Squeak's tangled history, they have also added many new facilities. New facilities = more complex, of necessity. In Squeak, simply because we have very few people, we haven't been able to add new stuff. Given my current obsession with making things modular, and given I'm one of the most prolific committers at the moment, that means that Squeak will go on a strict diet over the near future, as we drive more things out of the base image into separate, loadable/unloadable packages. > I also hope that Squeak continues advancing! I will > take a look at 4.5 -it's already released?. 4.5 is gearing up for a release in the next few months. But we always have "bleeding edge" versions available. For instance, if you have Ruby and a few odds and ends on your machine, you could clone https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-ci and run "rake update_base_image". This would give you a base, up-to-date 4.5 image of the "cut down" variety. If you ran "rake release" you'd get a 4.5 with all the normal things added to the "cut down" image - Nebraska, XML-Parser, Universes, and so on. > Of course I'm with you that in the future the ideal would be that all > packages could be loaded in Cuis Pharo Squeak with minor modifications. > Thanks again and best regards Always happy to see new people discover Smalltalk, regardless of which kind! frank > Nachonacio Sniechowski, MBA > > > > > > > > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Frank Shearar <[hidden email]> > wrote: >> >> On 11 December 2013 11:16, Ignacio Matías Sniechowski >> <[hidden email]> wrote: >> > Thank you, all of you for your warm welcome. >> > I totally agree with you. Simplicity is nothing but one side of the >> > coin, >> > being the other code quality. It's impossible to achieve a certain >> > degree of >> > simplicity and elegance without good code quality. >> > Once thing I'm curious is about the evolution of Cuis, how was >> > developed. In >> > squeak.org says that it's a fork of Squeak. But closely inspecting Cuis, >> > it >> > dawn on me that may be it was build from scratch. It seems that >> > unloading, >> > correcting, fixing and shrinking Cuis is much more time consuming than >> > -using Squeak as a guide- build from zero. >> > I've taken a look at Squeak 1.3 or 1.2 and it was much simpler than >> > let's >> > say 3.8 or 4.4 which is impossible to follow. >> >> Just for the record, I hope that 4.5 will be the start of a long trend >> of "getting better". We already started cleaning up messes in 4.4, and >> 4.5 has made a good start in addressing the inter-package complexities >> (that Pharo is now starting to get to grips with too). >> >> frank >> >> > Pharo has lots of classes too, >> > but everything is very good organized and once you know what is the >> > purpose >> > of package X, it's easy to concentrate on those that matter for the >> > project >> > being developed. Though IMHO I really prefer "extreme modularity" just >> > the >> > kernel. >> >> This kind of "extreme modularity" is a goal both of the Pharo and the >> Squeak communities. It's my hope that not too long from now, the >> differences between Squeak, Pharo and Cuis will be much less, and that >> we'll see applications and libraries freely moving between the various >> communities. >> >> frank >> >> > If you need something more, then just loaded, only those things >> > needed for a project. >> > Is there some guide or tutorial on morphic on Cuis? >> > Thanks in advance >> > Nacho >> > >> > >> > Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:00 AM, Casey Ransberger >> > <[hidden email]> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> Good to meet you! I'm in Seattle, Washington in the USA. Not terribly >> >> far >> >> from Ken as it happens. >> >> >> >> I did the main work around visual themes in Cuis, the original taskbar >> >> (which has since been replaced with something much nicer) and an odd >> >> little >> >> thing for moving assets in and out of the image called ContentPack. I >> >> also >> >> did some work to update our icons. >> >> >> >> In the future I look forward to contributing to the Morphic 3 effort, >> >> and >> >> to help continue Juan's earlier work with mobile devices. >> >> >> >> I was the second committer to Cuis (after Juan) and I must say that >> >> it's >> >> been a real joy to watch the community grow. >> >> >> >> It's a wonderful system. I think probably the strongest evidence that >> >> Juan's approach has been successful is that we were able to actually >> >> add >> >> features at the same time as removing classes and methods. Having a >> >> smaller, >> >> more manageable core opens up possibilities like this. >> >> >> >> Another part of this which is important to me is the idea that "the >> >> code >> >> is the curriculum," that the best way to make a complex system easy to >> >> understand and learn is to include only the highest quality code we can >> >> imagine, and avoid unnecessary complexity (or "complication") wherever >> >> possible. >> >> >> >> Glad to have you on the list, Ignacio! >> >> >> >> --Casey >> >> >> >> > On Dec 7, 2013, at 5:53 AM, nacho <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> > >> >> > My name is Ignacio (aka "nacho"). I'm a smalltalker apprentice, I >> >> > live >> >> > in >> >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> >> > I came to Cuis from Squeak's homepage. >> >> > Instantly get identified with Juan's observations, thoughts and >> >> > reflections. >> >> > It was like reading what I expect from a simple, powerful and >> >> > personal >> >> > development system. >> >> > Cuis is amazing. Maybe it does not have Seaside, Roassal, Athens, >> >> > etc. >> >> > But >> >> > that simplicity of only one person knowing all the aspects of the >> >> > system >> >> > is >> >> > invaluable. >> >> > I work in a company and most of the software I need it's developed by >> >> > me, so >> >> > knowing the system deep it's something very important for me. And >> >> > build >> >> > from >> >> > there. >> >> > Thanks Juan for developing such a wonderful Smalltalk environment. >> >> > Best regards >> >> > Nacho >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > ----- >> >> > Nacho >> >> > Smalltalker apprentice. >> >> > Buenos Aires, Argentina. >> >> > -- >> >> > View this message in context: >> >> > >> >> > http://forum.world.st/A-formal-presentation-to-the-list-tp4728293.html >> >> > Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> >> > >> >> > _______________________________________________ >> >> > Cuis mailing list >> >> > [hidden email] >> >> > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Cuis mailing list >> >> [hidden email] >> >> http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> > >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Cuis mailing list >> > [hidden email] >> > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cuis mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cuis mailing list > [hidden email] > http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org > _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
Re: A formal presentation to the list
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In reply to this post by Casey Ransberger-2
On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Casey Ransberger <[hidden email]> wrote:
Wow, thanks for saying that Casey. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy by this cultural obsession with "modern and shiny", but highly _inferior_, designs being forced on us which put form over function.
It's a "hipster in a coffee shop" culture which has infected both software and hardware. People care more about the "thinness" of the computer case more than the computer itself. Ergonomics has died.
"Its a sad day, when Hitler is the only voice of reason." -- Michael Massey It's like -- "Who cares if your computer/software is harder to use as long as you look like a magazine ad from across the room...?" _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org |
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On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 11:07:27 -0600
Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Casey Ransberger > <[hidden email]>wrote: > > > There's another aspect to the rewrite vs. refactor dilemma. Often times > > when doing a scratch rewrite of something originally written by someone > > else, one end up making many of the same mistakes in the original design, > > as well as new mistakes of one's own; in other words, history is important. > > Wow, thanks for saying that Casey. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy by > this cultural obsession with "modern and shiny", but highly _inferior_, > designs being forced on us which put form over function. To misquote Alan Perlis, "Smalltalk is an improvement over its successors". ;^) -KenD _______________________________________________ Cuis mailing list [hidden email] http://jvuletich.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis_jvuletich.org
-KenD
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