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An interesting view on social groups and their problems

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Bert Freudenberg

Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems

On Nov 10, 2007, at 21:44 , Jason Johnson wrote:

> 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.

I actually had the Visual Basic crowd in mind, the former HyperCard
users, the folks doing incredible stuff in Excel or MatLab etc. Those
who wouldn't call themselves "programmers" but just need to get stuff
done.

- Bert -

Jason Johnson-5

Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems

In reply to this post by Laurence Rozier

On Nov 10, 2007 5:50 PM, Laurence Rozier <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> 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.

A careful look at every big business I have worked with says
otherwise. The organization I'm at now is in fact half way into this
transition from C++ to Java. Granted my conclusions are based on a
very small subset of the IT industry. I assume your conclusions come
from the "Smalltalk Reloaded: Bits of History From the Golden Age"
article? Perhaps this was the case, but the fortune 500 orgs I've
worked for all were doing C or C++ and slowly moving toward Java.

Blake-5

Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems

In reply to this post by Jason Johnson-5

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 03:08:30 -0800, Jason Johnson
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> 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.

Why would people think that the GUI would be especially portable? Isn't
that part of why Dolphin was Windows-only?

I haven't done it myself but every time I've run into someone who has
tried to take a Windows-based GUI and port it to something more universal,
there has been grief.

Laurence Rozier

Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems

In reply to this post by Jason Johnson-5

On Nov 11, 2007 11:48 AM, Jason Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Nov 10, 2007 5:50 PM, Laurence Rozier <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> 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.

A careful look at every big business I have worked with says
otherwise.

The organization I'm at now is in fact half way into this
transition from C++ to Java. Granted my conclusions are based on a
very small subset of the IT industry.

Ok and what time frame are you talking about? I'm looking at the time when Java came into broader use because things were in a major state of flux then ...

I assume your conclusions come
from the "Smalltalk Reloaded: Bits of History From the Golden Age"
article? Perhaps this was the case, but the fortune 500 orgs I've
worked for all were doing C or C++ and slowly moving toward Java.

In the early 1990's as noted in this 1995 Software Magazine article, corporate IT was making a transtion from mainframe to client-server architectures. COBOL was the defacto development standard for business apps but wasn't suited for this new "enterprise" paradigm. The C crowd that had said thru the 80's objects weren't needed couldn't deliver so they claimed to have joined the bandwagon with C++. However, C++not only didn't fare very well on large projects or for rewriting COBAL apps and was clearly far too difficult a transition for COBOL programmers. For a brief period, the momentum had swung in Smalltalk's favor and most large new projects were deploying with Smalltalk.

Nor was Java mentioned when Digitalk and ParcPlace merged later that year. In fact, at the end of 1995, IBM which had only recently licensed Java was still touting VisualAge over Java for the web! At the time the Java Enterprise Edition Platform spec was announced in 1998, none of the incompatible Smalltalk offerings from a stagnant ParcPlace-Digitalk, an indifferent IBM, a research-oriented Squeak, or single platform Object-Arts was really focused on delivering internet aware solutions. Java and Ruby merely stepped in and filled a vacuum.
Smalltalk Reloaded: Marketing Isn't The Problem

According to Squeak Central:

In December of 1995, the authors found themselves wanting a development environment in which to build educational software that could be used—and even programmed—by non-technical people, and by children. ... We considered using Java but, despite its promise, Java was not yet mature: its libraries were in a state of flux, few commercial implementations were available, and those that were available lacked the hooks required to create the kind of dynamic change that we envisioned. ...
Back To The Future

It's hard to say what would have happened in a world where Smalltalk momentum was still rising, and the vacuum that a repurposed Java filled never existed. I think a lot of people would gladly trade a Haskell-sized niche for a ubiquitous Smalltalk based ecosystem like VisualAge where C++, Java and others could play together nicely.

So when we're talking about reinventing the future, I for one would like to get back to something that almost came to be - if was done once, it can be done again.

Sebastian Sastre-2

RE: An interesting view on social groups and their problems

In reply to this post by Jason Johnson-5

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: [hidden email]
> [mailto:[hidden email]] En
> nombre de Jason Johnson
> Enviado el: Sábado, 10 de Noviembre de 2007 16:23
> Para: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Asunto: Re: An interesting view on social groups and their problems
...

> > 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.
>

Hi Jason, hey I would be worried about that. You just don't load packages
authored by them until they prove, by some projects and/or valuable
contributions they make, they where able to deconstruct what they have
learned wrong :)

The rest will be assist, educate, teach, help people re-learn.. did I tell
educate? That should happen anyway

Cheers!

Sebastian