Amazing stuff (Was: Re: [squeak-dev] The future of Squeak & Pharo (was Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] Pharo MIT license clean))

Stéphane ,
i found some amazing stuff for you in Squeak.

Look for senders of:

#isKindOf:orOf:

and if you not yet fully amazed , then look at senders of

#ownerThatIsA:

Amazing!


2009/6/29 Igor Stasenko <[hidden email]>:


--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Igor Stasenko a écrit :
that's cool. how boring life would be with non-amazing software :)


now, seriously: I never said things should not be cleaned up. my view
about backward compatibility and progress is quite balanced, to me. I'm
sorry I can't make it convincing, and sorry to end up being considered
as an extremist opposed to any change.

Stef

Hi Stéphane,

2009/6/29 Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]>:
> now, seriously: I never said things should not be cleaned up. my view about
> backward compatibility and progress is quite balanced, to me. I'm sorry I
> can't make it convincing, and sorry to end up being considered as an
> extremist opposed to any change.

before things get heated: I really don't think anyone seriously takes
this view. :-)
(I, for one, certainly don't.)

Best,

Michael

2009/6/29 Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]>:
Be sure, i'm not an extremist as well.
But sometimes we need a more bold words to convince people abandon
their fears & jump in into a hot & fresh boiling soup :)
Every surgeon knows, that in order to force the bones to accrete
correctly, you have to break them again.

> Stef
>


--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

> Be sure, i'm not an extremist as well.
> But sometimes we need a more bold words to convince people abandon
> their fears & jump in into a hot & fresh boiling soup :)
> Every surgeon knows, that in order to force the bones to accrete
> correctly, you have to break them again.

I'm not driven by fear.

Stef

2009/6/29 Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]>:
>> Be sure, i'm not an extremist as well.
>> But sometimes we need a more bold words to convince people abandon
>> their fears & jump in into a hot & fresh boiling soup :)
>> Every surgeon knows, that in order to force the bones to accrete
>> correctly, you have to break them again.
>
> I'm not driven by fear.
>

I know you not. Do not interpret my words literally :)

> Stef
>
>
>



--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

BTW you did not answer this question: now that Pharo has taken the
non-backward compatibility road, why is the question again arising for
Squeak ?

people have choice, now.

Stef

2009/6/29 Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]>:
> BTW you did not answer this question: now that Pharo has taken the
> non-backward compatibility road, why is the question again arising for
> Squeak ?
>
Simply because:
" Every surgeon knows, that in order to force the bones to accrete
 correctly, you have to break them again. "

So, each time i thinking about potential changes in Squeak to improve
it, guess what? It doesn't makes sense to do that w/o cardinal changes
in some classes/protocols.
Maybe it is my personal style/perception, who knows, maybe i'm too
focused on cleaning stuff. But it will be last day of my life as
programmer, if i start using #isKindOf:orOf: or similar stuff. Or
start using stuff which using #isKindOf:orOf: .

> people have choice, now.
>
> Stef
>

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

> Maybe it is my personal style/perception, who knows, maybe i'm too
> focused on cleaning stuff. But it will be last day of my life as
> programmer, if i start using #isKindOf:orOf: or similar stuff. Or
> start using stuff which using #isKindOf:orOf: .

I hereby grant you my permission to kill #isKindOf:orOf: and all of its
friends and family.


Stef

Igor Stasenko wrote:
It would be useful if you stopped being so polemic. You are not making
any point that I can see.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

2009/6/29 Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]>:
>> Maybe it is my personal style/perception, who knows, maybe i'm too
>> focused on cleaning stuff. But it will be last day of my life as
>> programmer, if i start using #isKindOf:orOf: or similar stuff. Or
>> start using stuff which using #isKindOf:orOf: .
>
> I hereby grant you my permission to kill #isKindOf:orOf: and all of its
> friends and family.
>

Wellcome ...

http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2008-November/003603.html
http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2009-January/004623.html

to Pharo!

Muhahaha :))))

>
> Stef
>
>
>



--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

On 29.06.2009, at 10:11, Igor Stasenko wrote:


I don't think that is what Stéphane meant.

"Refactoring is making changes to a body of code in order to improve  
its internal structure, without changing its external behavior." -- M.  
Fowler

Refactoring is Good. We should do more of it in Squeak. Replace use of  
#isKindOf:orOf: with a more sensible design. Yay!

Ripping out stuff breaking features for a million users is not. Now  
Pharo does not have millions of users to care about yet, they are  
making a new system with a different focus. Great for them. But this  
does not really apply to Squeak.

- Bert -

> Ripping out stuff breaking features for a million users is not. Now
> Pharo does not have millions of users to care about yet, they are making
> a new system with a different focus. Great for them. But this does not
> really apply to Squeak.

right. BTW I can see Pharo having exactly the same debate in a couple of
years ahead, especially if it tries to keep both its research-oriented
and professionnal-status aims at the same time. it will have its own
backward compatibility to maintain after a while; at the moment it's all
new and bright and pink... we all know how it goes.

Stef

On Jun 29, 2009, at 3:10 AM, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:

> now, seriously: I never said things should not be cleaned up. my  
> view about backward compatibility and progress is quite balanced, to  
> me. I'm sorry I can't make it convincing, and sorry to end up being  
> considered as an extremist opposed to any change.
>
> Stef

I applaud your efforts - all of you - on the creation side.

I abandoned my Python base this last year because I got tired of the  
language changing.  This system was the result of 10 years of part-
time development. I like most of the changes to the language over the  
years, especially as they firmed up the OO aspects (names spaces,  
etc.), I just simply got tired of rewriting my code every time a new  
version came out and I wanted to utilize the features. And sometimes  
that was because some 3rd party library wasn't being ported to the new  
version and I was forced to adopt a new library. (Sure, I am being a  
little dramatic, as not every change was so radical as to require  
rewrites.)

I had some interest in C++ in the mid-1980's... but I did not like  
that the language definition kept changing (in that era). Fortunately  
I discovered smalltalk and objective-c around that time. Although,  
because of the lack of stable (multi-platform) support for objective-
C, my shop ended up rolling our own dynamic messaging system (change-
notification manager, and all the bells and whistles) in straight-up  
C... because we knew we would always be able to compile C.

For people to get serious about building large apps in Pharo -- and  
the following may not be one's goal, depending on who we are talking  
about -- it MUST have a stable interface (set of methods) to some core  
classes.  Ideally, the core environment should have the minimal  
interface that is guaranteed not to change. The implementation can be  
whatever fulfills the behavioral requirements best at the time; the  
end user (a programmer) does not care, so long as a given interface  
provides a predictable behavior across versions.

Is this a good time to talk about packages and namespaces? As a user  
(programmer), it would be nice to be able to specify which extensions  
(or behavioral overrides) to the core classes to enable. Ideally these  
extension sets/definitions could co-exist in the same image... but  
that is NOT required to provide the capability. It seems that a such  
capabilities would allow one to clean up the core, without abandoning  
existing interfaces; and hence, without completely breaking legacy  
code, e.g. to have #isKindOf:orOf: perhaps you need to import, or load  
the package KitchenSink. It *seems* that such capabilities could help  
bridge any future gaps between Squeak & Pharo, for example.

Of course, having these capabilities is one thing, and going through  
and scrubbing the code is another. Which, aside from the effort, still  
requires a committee to decide what is core (and to be permanently  
supported) and what is not.

-- back to broad adoption issues...

Speed/performance is also important in order to make Pharo appeal to a  
broader audience. Xupery might solve the problem. (I assume the C code  
generated has been highly optimized -- does any person "in the know"  
believe there is an opportunity for improving the C code?)

--

[Did I write something like this last week? I think i did, and then  
deleted it --  if this is a repeat, my apologies.]

Pharo is great. And for my development, I simply do not perform the  
updates very often, because I do not want to risk entering a debugging  
cycle on things that currently work. But the momentum is exciting and  
is part of the attraction!

With appreciation,
Cam