An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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An interesting view on social groups and their problems
 
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http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. tim -- tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim "How many Grogs does it take to change a lightbulb?" "One. Something with manipulatory appendages will be along eventually." |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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On Mon, 5 Nov 2007 11:37:20 -0800, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. That's a great article - one of the big turning points for me was when they loosed the AOL horde onto the internet. I don't remember what year it was, but I remember the devastation in some of the usenet groups I used to hang out in... Later, Jon -------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Hylands [hidden email] http://www.huv.com/jon Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot) http://www.huv.com/blog |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by timrowledge
Excellent article. Wrong about Calvinism, but otherwise on the money.
The fact the article is over four years old yet new to some of us emphasizes one of the author's points. Gary ----- Original Message ----- From: "tim Rowledge" <[hidden email]> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" <[hidden email]> Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 2:37 PM Subject: An interesting view on social groups and their problems > http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html > > Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. > > tim > -- > tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim > "How many Grogs does it take to change a lightbulb?" > "One. Something with manipulatory appendages will be along eventually." > > > |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by timrowledge
It's interesting. When he was describing what happened to Computertree, it sounded like a loss of innocence story. Gosh, it was great when our ideals came to life in other people, but those people, they have not been imbued by our ethos. How sad. Let's close the project. That's so precious. I long for eternal September to hit the Squeak and Seaside boards. Then the experts will fade away from this community, and be as rare as ghosts. That will be a loss, but a true sign of growing community. It will be at that point that these Smalltalk utilities are gaining wider currency, that a large community is growing. I long for the arrival of the barbarians. Smalltalkers talk about wider adoption, but they don't really want it. They like community to be as small and cozy as an English smoking lounge. I was talking to a developer at Smalltalk Solutions of a large product, and he said he was afraid of too many people using their product, because then people would blame their own deficiencies on the product. I'm not here just because I'm an aesthete, who likes Smalltalk. I just took the subway today to Yonge and Eglinton to a library here in Toronto to borrow Jonathan Littman's "Once Upon A Time In ComputerLand: The Amazing Billion-Dollar Tale of Bill Millard's ComputerLand Empire". I see Seaside as a 1975, Popular Electronics has just put the Altair on the cover opportunity. You may say I'm deluded, and you may have a point. But if I say most Smalltalkers talk about a greater level of adoption, while secretly trying to kill it, I'd have a point too. Chris |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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On 5-Nov-07, at 2:21 PM, Chris Cunnington wrote: > Smalltalkers talk about wider adoption, but they don't really want > it. They > like community to be as small and cozy as an English smoking lounge. > I was > talking to a developer at Smalltalk Solutions of a large product, > and he > said he was afraid of too many people using their product, because > then > people would blame their own deficiencies on the product. I occasionally get into arguments with Smalltalk advocates for exactly this reason. I don't want wider adoption of Smalltalk; I think the community is starting to get too big as it is. There are two things I do want, though. One is for Smalltalk to be "respectable." If you've got a problem that would be nicely solved in Smalltalk, it's a real shame to have to use some other language because the client or manager succumbs to FUD. The other is for the community to be effective. Using Smalltalk is only viable if libraries get written and maintained, tough questions can be answered, VM technology progresses, new platforms are supported as they emerge, and new language concepts can be integrated. As long as the community is big enough to let Smalltalkers remain Smalltalkers, it's big enough. To some degree, the community needs to be a certain size to effectively support its members, but I think that minimum size is shrinking. The "dark ages" for Smalltalk were that period when it had already become clear that Smalltalk would not become the standard language for enterprise development, but before the Internet had reached the level of social sophistication that we see now. Back to the original article. Shirky talks about the need for structure to all the group to protect it's principles against both newcomers and it's own group tendencies. I think the Smalltalk community would benefit by focussing on mutual support rather than evangelism. Colin |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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On 5-Nov-07, at 8:07 PM, Colin Putney wrote: >> > > I occasionally get into arguments with Smalltalk advocates for > exactly this reason. I don't want wider adoption of Smalltalk; I > think the community is starting to get too big as it is. There are > two things I do want, though. Mmm, I'm not sure I could agree with that really. I'd like somewhat wider adoption if only so as to provide a wider pool of interesting employment possibilities, at least for the next 10 years or so. It would be nice to retire without ever having to stoop to a lesser language. > > > One is for Smalltalk to be "respectable." If you've got a problem > that would be nicely solved in Smalltalk, it's a real shame to have > to use some other language because the client or manager succumbs to > FUD. Definitely. > > > The other is for the community to be effective. Using Smalltalk is > only viable if libraries get written and maintained, tough questions > can be answered, VM technology progresses, new platforms are > supported as they emerge, and new language concepts can be > integrated. As long as the community is big enough to let > Smalltalkers remain Smalltalkers, it's big enough. Well put. One problem we have at the moment is being effective. There are enough versions of Smalltalk to be quite awkwardly divisive; consider the diversionary effort that seems to be going into buying out Dolphin. Seems a crazy thing to do to me, but then I never really considered it a serious system. And yes, that's probably because I never got paid to use it. What other metric would one use? Another big problem is available time. Happily a lot of us are gainfully employed right now (which amazes me considering the dreadful state of the US economy, but there you are) and that means - at least in my case - very little time to spend on community projects. Unsurprisingly, the biggest advances in the vm tend to relate to times when one or more of the people with experience in the area are employed to work on it explicitly, for one example. Another problem is 'lost' time, as when someone with a lot of free time to flood the community with questions or opinions or argumentation 'bombs' us with demands that we have to change to using visual basic syntax, or change to functional programming or whatever. It's a problem well covered in Shirky's article, basically adding up to the old saw 'the squeaky wheel gets the oil'. tim -- tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do |
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On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:52:27 -0800, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. I'm not sure why it should be worrisome; It wouldn't exactly be tragic to have to implement some controls for managing a community. Maybe when all those OLPC kids come 'round.... > Happily a lot of us are gainfully employed right now (which amazes me > considering the dreadful state of the US economy, but there you are) Hmmmm. Maybe it's not so surprising. http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdp_glance.htm http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09econ.html Emlpoyment below 5%, 4 years of solid (and occasionally spectacular growth), and the government revenues up following a tax cut (surprising only to the NYT)? I could live with that kind of dreadfulness. |
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>> "Emlpoyment below 5%, 4 years of solid (and occasionally spectacular
growth), and the government revenues up following a tax cut (surprising only to the NYT)?" Heh heh. Stand by for "sure, but what KIND of jobs?" arguments, along with the ever-popular "war-based economy" dodge. C'mon, Blake, wake up; the glory years of the Carter administration must not be forgotten. We have seen paradise. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Blake" <[hidden email]> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" <[hidden email]> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 2:54 AM Subject: Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems > On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:52:27 -0800, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote: > > > Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. > > I'm not sure why it should be worrisome; It wouldn't exactly be tragic to > have to implement some controls for managing a community. Maybe when all > those OLPC kids come 'round.... > > > Happily a lot of us are gainfully employed right now (which amazes me > > considering the dreadful state of the US economy, but there you are) > > Hmmmm. Maybe it's not so surprising. > > http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm > http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdp_glance.htm > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09econ.html > > Emlpoyment below 5%, 4 years of solid (and occasionally spectacular > growth), and the government revenues up following a tax cut (surprising > only to the NYT)? > > I could live with that kind of dreadfulness. > |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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Also, this came across as slightly US-centric.
- Bert - On Nov 6, 2007, at 11:36 , gafisher wrote: >>> "Emlpoyment below 5%, 4 years of solid (and occasionally spectacular > growth), and the government revenues up following a tax cut > (surprising only > to the NYT)?" > > Heh heh. Stand by for "sure, but what KIND of jobs?" arguments, > along with > the ever-popular "war-based economy" dodge. C'mon, Blake, wake up; > the > glory years of the Carter administration must not be forgotten. We > have > seen paradise. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Blake" <[hidden email]> > To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" > <[hidden email]> > Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 2:54 AM > Subject: Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems > > >> On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:52:27 -0800, tim Rowledge >> <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >>> Makes a worrying amount of sense to me. >> >> I'm not sure why it should be worrisome; It wouldn't exactly be >> tragic to >> have to implement some controls for managing a community. Maybe >> when all >> those OLPC kids come 'round.... >> >>> Happily a lot of us are gainfully employed right now (which >>> amazes me >>> considering the dreadful state of the US economy, but there you >>> are) >> >> Hmmmm. Maybe it's not so surprising. >> >> http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm >> http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdp_glance.htm >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09econ.html >> >> Emlpoyment below 5%, 4 years of solid (and occasionally spectacular >> growth), and the government revenues up following a tax cut >> (surprising >> only to the NYT)? >> >> I could live with that kind of dreadfulness. >> > > |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Colin Putney
Well, for me personally, do I want Smalltalk to be mainstream like C#
and Java? Never. Becoming mainstream currently means getting flooded by a bunch of people who should not be programming. C# and Java are both charging down the path of complexity as fast as they can, and this is what I would most want to avoid in Smalltalk. When you go mainstream then you have people with some stupid reason they need just one more operator, precedence level and so on. People came to Java to avoid the complexity of C++, but all the people that caused that complexity came along too and soon Java will be worse then C++ ever was. Do I want Smalltalk to be obscure? No of course not. I think a good language to look up to is Haskell. They manage to create for themselves a reputation for simply being too hard to grasp, so mostly only smart people came. This is what Smalltalk needs. More smart people. We need better, faster VM's, libraries, solutions to hard problems. We don't need the masses from C++ et al coming here "solving" these issues the same terrible ways they solved them in their languages. I understand Tim's (and countless others) point about career opportunities, but if Smalltalk became the language of choice for sitting in a cubicle in a huge organization grinding out the same meaningless, boring code year after year, would that be a victory? On Nov 6, 2007 5:07 AM, Colin Putney <[hidden email]> wrote: > > On 5-Nov-07, at 2:21 PM, Chris Cunnington wrote: > > > Smalltalkers talk about wider adoption, but they don't really want > > it. They > > like community to be as small and cozy as an English smoking lounge. > > I was > > talking to a developer at Smalltalk Solutions of a large product, > > and he > > said he was afraid of too many people using their product, because > > then > > people would blame their own deficiencies on the product. > > I occasionally get into arguments with Smalltalk advocates for exactly > this reason. I don't want wider adoption of Smalltalk; I think the > community is starting to get too big as it is. There are two things I > do want, though. > > One is for Smalltalk to be "respectable." If you've got a problem that > would be nicely solved in Smalltalk, it's a real shame to have to use > some other language because the client or manager succumbs to FUD. > > The other is for the community to be effective. Using Smalltalk is > only viable if libraries get written and maintained, tough questions > can be answered, VM technology progresses, new platforms are supported > as they emerge, and new language concepts can be integrated. As long > as the community is big enough to let Smalltalkers remain > Smalltalkers, it's big enough. > > To some degree, the community needs to be a certain size to > effectively support its members, but I think that minimum size is > shrinking. The "dark ages" for Smalltalk were that period when it had > already become clear that Smalltalk would not become the standard > language for enterprise development, but before the Internet had > reached the level of social sophistication that we see now. > > Back to the original article. Shirky talks about the need for > structure to all the group to protect it's principles against both > newcomers and it's own group tendencies. I think the Smalltalk > community would benefit by focussing on mutual support rather than > evangelism. > > Colin > > |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by timrowledge
On Nov 6, 2007 5:52 AM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Mmm, I'm not sure I could agree with that really. I'd like somewhat > wider adoption if only so as to provide a wider pool of interesting > employment possibilities, at least for the next 10 years or so. It > would be nice to retire without ever having to stoop to a lesser > language. Oops, I see I mis-quoted you. "Somewhat wider adoption" I can certainly agree on. I think what we should strive for is the Haskell aproach of getting the best people we can. As you and Colin mentioned, we need effective people. The guys who churn out crappy code in <insert inferior language here> are no help for us, they just waste our time asking for things that we already have better solutions for. > Well put. One problem we have at the moment is being effective. There > are enough versions of Smalltalk to be quite awkwardly divisive; > consider the diversionary effort that seems to be going into buying > out Dolphin. Well, the thing with Dolphin is that it was by far the most beautiful Smalltalk on Windows. I don't think the buyout is so much about keeping it out there as a platform, as it is about having the write to take the GUI code and move it to e.g. Squeak. Dolphin was far superior to any system I have ever seen for building GUI's and that's what people don't want to see lost. > Happily a lot of us are > gainfully employed right now (which amazes me considering the > dreadful state of the US economy, but there you are) and that means - > at least in my case - very little time to spend on community projects. Yes, that is a problem. We need to make a business to sell to google/microsoft/who ever so we can become financially independent. :) |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Jason Johnson-5
On Nov 10, 2007, at 11:57 , Jason Johnson wrote:
> When you go > mainstream then you have people with some stupid reason they need just > one more operator, precedence level and so on. People came to Java to > avoid the complexity of C++, but all the people that caused that > complexity came along too and soon Java will be worse then C++ ever > was. One could argue that if you set out from a restricted environment, you can only enhance it by adding complexity. That certainly is what happened - Java advocates always laughed about C++ templates, and now they have them too as generics, because you actually need them in that system to be expressive. If you start with a powerful simple model, the urge to extend it is much smaller - see Lisp or Smalltalk, you can basically do anything you want within the system. > I understand Tim's (and countless others) point about career > opportunities, but if Smalltalk became the language of choice for > sitting in a cubicle in a huge organization grinding out the same > meaningless, boring code year after year, would that be a victory? Does anybody here still subscribe to the idea that Smalltalk should be a system in particular for non-experts? That certainly was its original motivation. It also has largely failed in that regard, though not necessarily so on technical reasons. - Bert - |
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Hello Bert,
BF> Does anybody here still subscribe to the idea that Smalltalk should BF> be a system in particular for non-experts? That certainly was its BF> original motivation. It also has largely failed in that regard, BF> though not necessarily so on technical reasons. Yes I do, actually that's what's attracted me to Squeak. I'm an engineer and I need a software toolbox. Think Matlab. Squeak is brought ahead right now by Software people so it goes into their direction, not towards non expert users. (Which is ok, as they do the work.) But in the end a small modularized kernel will help non expert users too. If it has easy access to the wealth of existing code which was in older images it will even be attractive for them. Cheers Herbert mailto:[hidden email] |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Jason Johnson-5
On Nov 10, 2007 5:57 AM, Jason Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote: Well, for me personally, do I want Smalltalk to be mainstream like C# Ever since 1981, I've subscribed to the view put forth by Dan Ingalls The purpose of the Smalltalk project is to provide computer
support for the creative spirit in everyone. Design Principles Behind Smalltalk There are plenty of smart people with different objectives than language enthusiasts and computer scientists, but the beauty of Smalltalk is that those objectives don't have to be mutually exclusive. Smalltalk by definition is more than a programming language. It's perfectly fine to create something but it's not Smalltalk/Squeak. C# and Java are A careful look at the history Java seems to indicate otherwise. Java didn't replace C++ in the business world because C++ never got rooted there outside of engineering and embedded apps. ... Java filled a vacuum created by the Smalltalk community. Moreover, it was only able to fill this vacuum riding the Smalltalk-based VisualAge IDE that Eclipse was born from. Smalltalk Reloaded: Bits of History From the Golden Age ... but all the people that caused that While this stereotypical situation does exist, there are also a lot of individuals and small groups of extreme programmers doing the same thing - some of them are even using Smalltalk :-) OTOH, there are highly skilled and creative people at large corporations using mainstream tools that make it possible for reliable semiconductors, satellites and airplanes to be designed, built and operated. Without these people, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation. I believe that with a bit more focus on enlightened self interest, the various factions of the Squeak community can have their cake and eat it too. Laurence
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Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Herbert König
On Nov 10, 2007 11:02 AM, Herbert König <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hello Bert, I'm an +1 Think Matlab. or OLPC/eToys
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Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg
On Nov 10, 2007 1:30 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 2007, at 11:57 , Jason Johnson wrote: > > One could argue that if you set out from a restricted environment, > you can only enhance it by adding complexity. Or realize that if something is so complex it's probably wrong and look for another solution. > That certainly is what > happened - Java advocates always laughed about C++ templates, and now > they have them too as generics, because you actually need them in > that system to be expressive. Yep, but if you switch to a late bound type system or a more effective type system (e.g. Haskell's inferred type system is much easier to work with while being stronger typed). > If you start with a powerful simple model, the urge to extend it is > much smaller - see Lisp or Smalltalk, you can basically do anything > you want within the system. That's true, but what would happen if Lisp or Smalltalk had the people Java has now? I'm obviously not optimistic about what would occur. > Does anybody here still subscribe to the idea that Smalltalk should > be a system in particular for non-experts? That certainly was its > original motivation. It also has largely failed in that regard, > though not necessarily so on technical reasons. Well, I wasn't thinking about children when I said "people who should not be programming". I was more thinking about people who have been brain-washed with horrible systems for decades that are either not capable or not willing to see that there are better options out there then what they know. A child does not have this preprogramming so I would expect them to be potentially good contributors. |
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> Well, I wasn't thinking about children when I said "people who should > not be programming". I was more thinking about people who have been > brain-washed with horrible systems for decades that are either not > capable or not willing to see that there are better options out there > then what they know. > > A child does not have this preprogramming so I would expect them to be > potentially good contributors. Bert didn't say children. You said children. He said "non experts". I realized a year ago that the prevailing attitude of Smalltalkers was that the language was either for Ph.D candidates or children. That attitude disgusts me. It's the attitude of snobs. I understand how those who lived through the early 90s using Smalltalk feel burned. It's no reason to turn your back on the world. This is where we came from: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4365247885921962429&q=Smalltalk+Gold berg&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 How did we get from Adele's attitude to being a coterie of precious, effete snobs? Chris |
Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
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In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg
On 10-Nov-07, at 4:30 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > > Does anybody here still subscribe to the idea that Smalltalk should > be a system in particular for non-experts? Not the 'in particular', no. Part of the problem we will always face when trying to say what Smalltalk is/could be/should be is that it is massively malleable. What bits of code are 'Smalltalk'? What bits are 'applications'? Does the question even really have a meaning? Me, I'm an engineer of various sorts. I see things through that mind filter; I see core capabilities and layers of extension and little eddies of applications. I think that the fundamental simplicity and cleanliness of the language core means that it ought to be possible to build systems for non-expert programmers that allow them to do what they want AND provide ways to let those same people have access to as much depth in the system as they feel like digging into. You can build really neat systems in any language if you want. Providing user access to all the details down to the lowest levels is probably hugely easier (at both ends) if you have a simple, uniform, live system. tim -- tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Useful random insult:- Not an idiot, but plays one in his life. |
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In reply to this post by Chris Cunnington-5
On Nov 10, 2007 8:03 PM, Chris Cunnington <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Bert didn't say children. You said children. He said "non experts". True, but I assumed he was thinking of the $100 laptop project and the children. And also, I believe the "purpose" he referred to was the statement about Smalltalk being simple enough for a child to use it. |
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