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Dennis Schetinin

Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

… and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit

Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending me there.
Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow! it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.
And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some directions…
Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, but apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list. I didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important to look closer at the projects we did within GSoC, understand where we succeeded; where we failed; did we benefit and could we get more; make some plans for the future... etc.
I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very important for our small society. Of course, we can't be sure smalltalkers will be invited again next year. (One of the things I tried to understand at summit but still I don't: how does Google select mentor organizations?) But this work will be very helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever.
We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our projects. Since money are involved here, we have a right to. That's money from Google, but still. I think it should be a bit different from the way free projects are evolved within Smalltalk society. Since we have such opportunity we have to benefit as much as we can.
Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I don't want to :) but now I understand even better: we have to promote Smalltalk. I know everybody knows that, but I still want to state it once again. And promoting is not only about advertising and praising. We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's extremely hard for me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) But still we have if we don't want Smalltalk to die. In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers.

--
Dennis Schetinin

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SergeStinckwich

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Dennis Schetinin <[hidden email]> wrote:

> … and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit
>
> Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very
> pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock
> :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending
> me there.
> Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we
> know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like
> everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still
> exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow!
> it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk
> seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that
> for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language
> and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to
> set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.
> And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas
> mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some
> directions…

Hi Dennis,

thank you for you nice report !
You are totally right ... i have the same problem when i meet
developers from other languages.
It's very difficult to change the mind of people. I have no real
answer except continue do some cool stuff and make more noise.

Regards,

--
Serge Stinckwich
UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam
Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk
http://doesnotunderstand.org/

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Andres Valloud-6

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

> You are totally right ... i have the same problem when i meet
> developers from other languages. It's very difficult to change the
> mind of people. I have no real answer except continue do some cool
> stuff and make more noise.

I betcha this is a two way street. What would we see in a Smalltalker
from the point of view of, say, C? Would we think we can change the
Smalltalker's mind?

I remember Stephane and others commenting several times that appearance
is an issue, and that we need a nicer looking UI. Is this really the
main selling factor these days, or does that apply mostly to students (I
phrase it this way because I remember Stef making the comment
specifically with respect to students)?

Andres.

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Geert Claes

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

Administrator

Valloud, Andres wrote

... I remember Stephane and others commenting several times that appearance is an issue, and that we need a nicer looking UI. Is this really the main selling factor these days, or does that apply mostly to students? ...

Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience: intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look and feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being treated like a black and white movie :)

Andres Valloud-6

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience:
> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look and
> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is
> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that
> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being
> treated like a black and white movie :)

But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we
will make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on
the difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with
how to make an image from scratch, for example.

Andres.

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Noury Bouraqadi-2

Promoting Smalltalk (was Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code)

In reply to this post by Dennis Schetinin

Thanks Dennis for this detailed feedback. It's important to keep the community informed.

On 29 oct. 2010, at 05:41, Dennis Schetinin wrote:

> We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages.
> [...]
> In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers.
>
I fully agree. There are multiple directions to go.

-Applications : We should develop cool applications that target domains that interest users (e.g. mobile applications, web). The look and feel/ user experience is important to have some impact. A recent really cool example is the Event Planning System developed by the belgian company Inceptive. We need to advertise more such applications to the outside of the community. The on-line videos and slides, blogs and the awards are made for this. Still we need more advertisements in places where we can

-GUI : This is coupled with the previous item. We need native widgets. Smalltalk developers should be able to applications that comply with the appearance of other applications. Projects such as MARS (Smalltalk software with Mac OS X widgets) is an example.

-Programming environments : I love the Smalltalk IDE. Still, many developers don't want to change their programming habit. May be not from the beginning. We should be able to develop Smalltalk in an text editor. This was done in GNU Smalltalk and there is also the CORAL initiative. The effort need to be continued.

-Standard/Mainstream protocols, libraries, and infrastructures. We need to provide a bridge to all important pieces of software (e.g. OpenGL). Web frameworks such as Seaside, Aida are definitely a great step in this direction.

-Documentation : Both on-line and paper articles and books. Code examples are important. People new to Smalltalk should quickly find some code to copy/paste and test.

To sum up, there are already different actions. Still, we need to do more. If you have ideas share them with us. Spending a little of your time in one of these actions would be beneficial to everyone.

Noury

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Graham McLeod

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Dennis Schetinin

Hi Dennis, Geert, Adres, Serge and other commenters..

I used to teach information systems at the University of Cape Town, where final year students do an industry project.
I visited their project demonstration expo yesterday as a a guest. I last taught there in 2003, and on that course around 2000, so it is just ten years since the last projects I supervised directly. What saddened me was that the projects had great looking UI's and most were available as both desktop and web applications, but the fundamental functionality, integrity, sophistication of systems and thought in design was actually at a lower standard than we had a decade ago. I even saw interfaces where it would require software changes to add a new product category, for example. The new shininess is largely due to the use of new tools such as Visual Studio, Web Frameworks (think JQuery, ExtJs etc. ) and new browser and OS skins (Chrome / Windows 7 etc. ).

Unfortunately, like when meeting someone, or dating, first impressions count. Students (and many commercial developers and their managers who hold budgets) are impressed by shiny new toys. If these are proffered by professional looking marketing people at fancy functions at apparently successful companies (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle..) then they are all the more impressed. People like computer scientists and modelers who are trying to solve fundamental problems, get the data structures right, get the algorithms right etc. are far more likely to look past the gloss and glitz and appreciate the power and capabilities of a language like Smalltalk.

So, what to do? I think there are a number of good things we can leverage, and some ideas:

Push the variants of Smalltalk that _do_ look good - these include Pharo, VisualWorks on the desktop, Dolphin etc.
Show the power of the IDEs and contrast these with the clumsy bulkiness of something like Eclipse. Here we must be careful, because there are other very slick products out there, including Visual Studio (it _is_ very pretty :| )
Push the web capable variants (pretty much all the Smalltalks with Seaside or Aida) - many people are surprised at how well Smalltalk "does" web
Show developers the power of the language - especially the ability to create a "domain friendly" language at a level of abstraction that reduces the code required for solutions dramatically
Create literature and make it widely available on project success stories and language productivity (properly measured - e.g. function points per staff month)
Interestingly, I recently was exposed to a large and "successful" Java project in an assurance environment. When we measured the developer productivity, it was about 25% lower than we were getting with mainframe COBOL in the late '70s!
And some ideas:

Link Smalltalk to "sexy" topics that have current mindshare - e.g. CloudFork is a good example.
I would like to see a GSOC project to address semantic triple store capabilities and a sematic web application of these - think Freebase
Doing good UI's is still quite hard and labour intensive - Seaside provides a great framework, but we are still working pretty much at the level of HTML / CSS concepts. I would like to see a layer describing logical data structures e.g. List, Tree, Matrix, Document (sequenced set of objects), Model (spatially arranged and possibly connected objects) and a visual editor (or very high level DSL) that allows composition of these into user interfaces with a publish / subscribe event model and choice of suitable controls and widgets based upon the logical data type. (this one is probably a bit too big for a GSOC but may be tackled in pieces. )
We should also try to put together really rich / capable development images which are easily accessible / one click install and still small enough to be grasped reasonably easily by someone new to the environment. These could include tools like: pharo, sunit, seaside, (some easy clean persistence layer), magritte, pier, swakom, moose, glamour on steroides (see previous point). Maybe integrating these tools and providing a nice dashboard could be another good GSOC target..

Hope some of this makes sense.
Welcome feedback and comments.
Best regards,

Graham

Dennis Schetinin wrote:

… and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit

Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending me there.

Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow! it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.

And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some directions…

Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, but apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list. I didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important to look closer at the projects we did within GSoC, understand where we succeeded; where we failed; did we benefit and could we get more; make some plans for the future... etc.

I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very important for our small society. Of course, we can't be sure smalltalkers will be invited again next year. (One of the things I tried to understand at summit but still I don't: how does Google select mentor organizations?) But this work will be very helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever.

We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our projects. Since money are involved here, we have a right to. That's money from Google, but still. I think it should be a bit different from the way free projects are evolved within Smalltalk society. Since we have such opportunity we have to benefit as much as we can.

Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I don't want to :) but now I understand even better: we have to promote Smalltalk. I know everybody knows that, but I still want to state it once again. And promoting is not only about advertising and praising. We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's extremely hard for me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) But still we have if we don't want Smalltalk to die. In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers.

--
Dennis Schetinin
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Andres Valloud-6

Re: Promoting Smalltalk (was Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code)

In reply to this post by Noury Bouraqadi-2

> -Standard/Mainstream protocols, libraries, and infrastructures. We
> need to provide a bridge to all important pieces of software (e.g.
> OpenGL).

With respect to bridging to other languages in particular, we need to be
careful not to impose a Smalltalk POV on things that are not Smalltalk.
For instance, the community of the "foreign" language targeted by an
FFI is not going to be impressed by our efforts if they see their
language misrepresented or misunderstood. This is only fair, if some
other language wrote an FFI into Smalltalk, we wouldn't like this other
FFI to misrepresent Smalltalk either.

> People like computer scientists and modelers who are trying to solve
fundamental problems, get the data structures right, get the algorithms
right etc. are far more likely to look past the gloss and glitz and
appreciate the power and capabilities of a language like Smalltalk.

Yes, and in some areas I think we could be doing a better job at
promoting Smalltalk to those people.

> What saddened me was that the projects had great looking UI's and
most were available as both desktop and web applications, but the
fundamental functionality, integrity, sophistication of systems and
thought in design was actually at a lower standard than we had a decade ago.

I hope we manage to stay as far away from that as possible, for
otherwise we would not be leveraging Smalltalk's advantages when dealing
with difficult problems. And it's hard to ignore people who
consistently deal with difficult problems successfully...

Andres.

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Geert Claes

Re: Promoting Smalltalk

Administrator

In reply to this post by Noury Bouraqadi-2

Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote

-Applications : We should develop cool applications that target domains that interest users (e.g. mobile applications, web). The look and feel/ user experience is important to have some impact. A recent really cool example is the Event Planning System developed by the belgian company Inceptive...

Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote

-Programming environments : I love the Smalltalk IDE. Still, many developers don't want to change their programming habit. ...

Smalltalkers do love their powerful IDE, but to the average newcomer it is - compared to other IDE's these days - certainly far from being intuitive.

Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote

-Documentation : Both on-line and paper articles and books. Code examples are important. People new to Smalltalk should quickly find some code to copy/paste and test.

Yes, I reckon a better, easier to use project/code sharing infrastructure (replacing SqueakSource) is required with more useful educational sample projects.

Julian Fitzell-2

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Andres Valloud-6

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Andres Valloud <[hidden email]> wrote:

>> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience:
>> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look
>> and
>> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is
>> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that
>> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being
>> treated like a black and white movie :)
>
> But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we will
> make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on the
> difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with how to
> make an image from scratch, for example.

As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users,
customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most
people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but
without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing
(visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any
chance of being more than a tiny niche (think of WinAmp or VLC -
neither would have been successful without attractive, intuitive user
interfaces, even though the real reason I used/use them was for the
really practical features).

Julian

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Andres Valloud-6

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

One such difficult problem would be to make a visually compelling UI
framework, fully capable of supporting and deploying real production
applications.

On 10/29/2010 1:35 AM, Julian Fitzell wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Andres Valloud<[hidden email]> wrote:
>>> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience:
>>> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look
>>> and
>>> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is
>>> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that
>>> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being
>>> treated like a black and white movie :)
>>
>> But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we will
>> make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on the
>> difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with how to
>> make an image from scratch, for example.
>
> As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users,
> customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most
> people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but
> without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing
> (visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any
> chance of being more than a tiny niche (think of WinAmp or VLC -
> neither would have been successful without attractive, intuitive user
> interfaces, even though the real reason I used/use them was for the
> really practical features).
>
> Julian
>

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Janko Mivšek

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Julian Fitzell-2

On 29. 10. 2010 10:35, Julian Fitzell wrote:

>>> On 29. 10. 2010 09:34, Geert Claes wrote:
>>> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience:
>>> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look
>>> and
>>> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is
>>> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that
>>> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being
>>> treated like a black and white movie :)

> As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users,
> customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most
> people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but
> without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing
> (visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any
> chance of being more than a tiny niche

Agree completely. Aesthetics is very important moment here, specially in
a world where perception is more important than reality, as Graham very
nicely shown with his examples.

That's why we need to be balanced here, we need to make a better
"perception" (look&feel, marketing, documentation,...) but be careful
not to forget to our "reality" (technical brilliance), which is actually
our stronger point and which is the cause why Smalltalk is resurrecting
again and again

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

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Geert Claes

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

Administrator

In reply to this post by Andres Valloud-6

Valloud, Andres wrote

One such difficult problem would be to make a visually compelling UI framework, fully capable of supporting and deploying real production applications.

This becomes much less of an issue since most development - I know not all:) - is moving to the web.

Julian Fitzell-2

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Andres Valloud-6

Agreed. UI frameworks are an officially certified Hard Problem. :)

Julian

On 10/29/10, Andres Valloud <[hidden email]> wrote:

> One such difficult problem would be to make a visually compelling UI
> framework, fully capable of supporting and deploying real production
> applications.
>
> On 10/29/2010 1:35 AM, Julian Fitzell wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Andres Valloud<[hidden email]>
>> wrote:
>>>> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience:
>>>> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look
>>>> and
>>>> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there
>>>> is
>>>> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved
>>>> that
>>>> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being
>>>> treated like a black and white movie :)
>>>
>>> But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we
>>> will
>>> make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on the
>>> difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with how
>>> to
>>> make an image from scratch, for example.
>>
>> As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users,
>> customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most
>> people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but
>> without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing
>> (visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any
>> chance of being more than a tiny niche (think of WinAmp or VLC -
>> neither would have been successful without attractive, intuitive user
>> interfaces, even though the real reason I used/use them was for the
>> really practical features).
>>
>> Julian
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Esug-list mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
>

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Josef Springer

Re: Promoting Smalltalk (was Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code)

In reply to this post by Noury Bouraqadi-2

Thanks for this expressions. I fully agree too !!!

We are developing a Business-Process-Management-Suite, called OfficeTalk. OfficeTalk has won in the past a few awards. One of the highest priority is the GUI and the usability.
OfficeTalk is made open to systems made with all other technologies (COM, ActiveX, DotNET, Web, aso). If we propagate more of the existing systems, Smalltalk gets more acceptance too !

Josef Springer
(JOOPS Informationstechnik GmbH)

Noury Bouraqadi wrote:

Thanks Dennis for this detailed feedback. It's important to keep the community informed.

On 29 oct. 2010, at 05:41, Dennis Schetinin wrote:

We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages.
[...]
In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers.

I fully agree. There are multiple directions to go.

-Applications : We should develop cool applications that target domains that interest users (e.g. mobile applications, web). The look and feel/ user experience is important to have some impact. A recent really cool example is the Event Planning System developed by the belgian company Inceptive. We need to advertise more such applications to the outside of the community. The on-line videos and slides, blogs and the awards are made for this. Still we need more advertisements in places where we can

-GUI : This is coupled with the previous item. We need native widgets. Smalltalk developers should be able to applications that comply with the appearance of other applications. Projects such as MARS (Smalltalk software with Mac OS X widgets) is an example.

-Programming environments : I love the Smalltalk IDE. Still, many developers don't want to change their programming habit. May be not from the beginning. We should be able to develop Smalltalk in an text editor. This was done in GNU Smalltalk and there is also the CORAL initiative. The effort need to be continued.

-Standard/Mainstream protocols, libraries, and infrastructures. We need to provide a bridge to all important pieces of software (e.g. OpenGL). Web frameworks such as Seaside, Aida are definitely a great step in this direction.

-Documentation : Both on-line and paper articles and books. Code examples are important. People new to Smalltalk should quickly find some code to copy/paste and test.

To sum up, there are already different actions. Still, we need to do more. If you have ideas share them with us. Spending a little of your time in one of these actions would be beneficial to everyone.

Noury

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Frank Shearar-3

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Graham McLeod

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Graham McLeod <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Dennis, Geert, Adres, Serge and other commenters..
>
> Doing good UI's is still quite hard and labour intensive - Seaside provides
> a great framework, but we are still working pretty much at the level of HTML
> / CSS concepts. I would like to see a layer describing logical data
> structures e.g. List, Tree, Matrix, Document (sequenced set of objects),
> Model (spatially arranged and possibly connected objects) and a visual
> editor (or very high level DSL) that allows composition of these into user
> interfaces with a publish / subscribe event model and choice of suitable
> controls and widgets based upon the logical data type. (this one is probably
> a bit too big for a GSOC but may be tackled in pieces. )

Squeak uses ToolBuilder to describe UI elements - lists, buttons, code
panes, menus, and the like. Has anyone considered writing a
SeasideToolBuilder to generate HTML/CSS?

frank

> Hope some of this makes sense.
> Welcome feedback and comments.
> Best regards,
>
> Graham
>
> Dennis Schetinin wrote:
>
> … and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit
>
> Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very
> pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock
> :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending
> me there.
> Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we
> know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like
> everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still
> exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow!
> it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk
> seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that
> for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language
> and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to
> set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.
> And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas
> mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some
> directions…
> Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, but
> apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page
> http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list. I
> didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important to look closer
> at the projects we did within GSoC, understand where we succeeded; where we
> failed; did we benefit and could we get more; make some plans for the
> future... etc.
> I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very important for our
> small society. Of course, we can't be sure smalltalkers will be invited
> again next year. (One of the things I tried to understand at summit but
> still I don't: how does Google select mentor organizations?) But this work
> will be very helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever.
> We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our projects.
> Since money are involved here, we have a right to. That's money from Google,
> but still. I think it should be a bit different from the way free projects
> are evolved within Smalltalk society. Since we have such opportunity we have
> to benefit as much as we can.
> Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I don't want to
> :) but now I understand even better: we have to promote Smalltalk. I know
> everybody knows that, but I still want to state it once again. And promoting
> is not only about advertising and praising. We should be more open. We
> should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other
> societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's extremely hard for
> me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) But still we have if we don't
> want Smalltalk to die. In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open
> should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige
> of Smalltalk among developers.
>
> --
> Dennis Schetinin
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>

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jarober

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

In reply to this post by Geert Claes

I'm not sure that's the case. I used that line a lot when I was the Smalltalk Evangelist at Cincom, and it's true - up to a point. However, the prospective developer who looks at the tools from a personal use standpoint cares. So

-- the not quite "standard" widgets in VisualWorks make him think
-- the "all in one windows" thing in Pharo and Squeak make him think

I don't think those are complete showstoppers, but they are hurdles - and they are additional hurdles the Smalltalk community doesn't need. Consider that we already present two big hurdles that we require people to get past:

-- The prospective user can't use his favorite editor
-- The prospective user can't use his favorite source code control tools

the UI hurdle is something that could be dealt with (and yes, I recognize the difficulties). The last two are just there. Given that, the additional UI level one should be considered more seriously

On Oct 29, 2010, at 5:05 AM, Geert Claes wrote:

>
>
> Valloud, Andres wrote:
>>
>> One such difficult problem would be to make a visually compelling UI
>> framework, fully capable of supporting and deploying real production
>> applications.
>>
>
> This becomes much less of an issue since most development - I know not all:)
> - is moving to the web.
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018404p3018731.html
> Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> [hidden email]
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James Robertson
http://www.jarober.com
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SergeStinckwich

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:14 PM, James Robertson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I'm not sure that's the case. I used that line a lot when I was the Smalltalk Evangelist at Cincom, and it's true - up to a point. However, the prospective developer who looks at the tools from a personal use standpoint cares. So
>
> -- the not quite "standard" widgets in VisualWorks make him think
> -- the "all in one windows" thing in Pharo and Squeak make him think

But comparing to Ruby, there is no standard UI in Ruby and this not
really annoying for the people, because they deploy their application
on the web.

Regards,

--
Serge Stinckwich
UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam
Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk
http://doesnotunderstand.org/

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jarober

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

The Ruby <developer> sees a text editor - the one he picked. The Smalltalk developer sees the Smalltalk browser (etc). My point is that the UI is the first thing the new Smalltalker sees, and it creates an impression.

On Oct 29, 2010, at 6:19 AM, Serge Stinckwich wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:14 PM, James Robertson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I'm not sure that's the case. I used that line a lot when I was the Smalltalk Evangelist at Cincom, and it's true - up to a point. However, the prospective developer who looks at the tools from a personal use standpoint cares. So
>>
>> -- the not quite "standard" widgets in VisualWorks make him think
>> -- the "all in one windows" thing in Pharo and Squeak make him think
>
> But comparing to Ruby, there is no standard UI in Ruby and this not
> really annoying for the people, because they deploy their application
> on the web.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Serge Stinckwich
> UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam
> Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk
> http://doesnotunderstand.org/

Geert Claes

Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

Administrator

In reply to this post by jarober

Serge Stinckwich wrote

But comparing to Ruby, there is no standard UI in Ruby and this not really annoying for the people, because they deploy their application on the web.

Hence my remark that standard UI is less of an issue on the web :)

James Robertson wrote

... Consider that we already present two big hurdles that we require people to get past:
- The prospective user can't use his favorite editor
- The prospective user can't use his favorite source code control tools

What is the developer's favorite editor/IDE and why? As mentioned before, this is all about the User eXperience. The developer probably doesn't care what source code control system is being used, as long as it does the job and is easy to use.

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