I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

Just a thought on the discussions about Smalltalkhub beeing down and people would love to use Gibhub instead:

I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

And there is all this talk about building a business with Pharo - why not make a business from Smalltalkhub? The thought of course is that when Smalltalkhub would be a business, it’s makers could spend more time and effort keeping it up and running and adding new features.

This may have been quoted a lot but still:
"The lesson: People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.“
From: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2794-how-to-get-good-at-making-money

Hi.

You’re right in general. But for me the main question is: can Monticello work well? This thing was not evolving for years. Something has to be done.

Uko

On 03 Nov 2013, at 13:22, MartinW <[hidden email]> wrote:

Kilon wrote
>I take a look at previous experiments like squeaksource and I find little justification to not support Github. But then I am not against Smalltalkhub or other >repos being available to Pharo. The more the merrier.  

I see some very strong arguments against depending on github:
- it is centralized infrastructure, essentially unsuitable for use with a distributed version control system;
- it doesn’t support working at the right granularity;
- the smalltalk community is too small to have any influence on the directions github is taking.
  It is a commercial organization that can decide to do something we don’t like at any time.
  It is free, so we are the product. Just take a look at sourceforge;
- we can do much better than github (but don’t have enough time). We should be using a P2P,
  bittorrent like system for version control.

Stephan

But why?

On 03 Nov 2013, at 15:52, Stephan Eggermont <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Kilon wrote
>> I take a look at previous experiments like squeaksource and I find little justification to not support Github. But then I am not against Smalltalkhub or other >repos being available to Pharo. The more the merrier.  
>
> I see some very strong arguments against depending on github:
> - it is centralized infrastructure, essentially unsuitable for use with a distributed version control system;
It’s now. Git is decentralised. And Guthub helps to use that even more with forks, pull requests, etc.

> - it doesn’t support working at the right granularity;
I don’t get the point.

> - the smalltalk community is too small to have any influence on the directions github is taking.
true

>  It is a commercial organization that can decide to do something we don’t like at any time.
>  It is free, so we are the product. Just take a look at sourceforge;
> - we can do much better than github (but don’t have enough time). We should be using a P2P,
>  bittorrent like system for version control.
I think we should think about that. Monticello bothers me a lot. You have a lot of duplications, no safety for previous versions, etc. I don’t like an idea of snapshots. Storing changes looks much better to me.

>
>
> Stephan
>
>
>

Uko

On 2013-11-03, at 15:52, Stephan Eggermont <[hidden email]> wrote:
github != git and whether we use github or now does not matter at all.
What matters is that we use technology that is robust and that we have a versioning
system that works decentralized. All of that is solved by git.

With filetree we have the proper granularity (methods)
With github we have an awesome website, such as we have an aweseome website with smalltalkhub, execpt that monticello should be modernized. Sadly the community is too small to achieve that, and inventing yet another versioning tool/system won't help on the short run. Maybe, yes someday in the future we can have our own fancy fully object-oriented versioning system, but IMO that is wasted effort, as git/mercurial come very close to something ideal.

I am happy to give more insight into git, because I think you have quite a wrong picture about it :)

I'm really just a fairly uninterested bystander who's been eavesdropping.

I don't much care one way or the other, except that I'd *love* to see
Pharo explode
into the popularity that it deserves.

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 9:34 AM, kilon alios <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Influence the way Github goes is besides the point at this point since we
> dont have a better alternative and I will be a great oracle to predict , or
> not, that we wont have one in the next decade.

Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to
predict the future is to create it."


> Unless something
> extraordinary happens and Pharo goes super popular.

I think that may be the wrong attitude. Even if it doesn't, the best
ideas will filter
down to inferior languages/environments. Things like Visual Studio and Resharper
are still trying to bring Smalltalk into the mainstream...though in a
very limited
scope.

If someone creates something that's a significant improvement to github, and
it's generally useful, it won't matter what technology created it. It
either will
supplant github or github will extend and embrace the ideas.

Either way, the ecosystem improves.

I could probably write a thesis about the actual economics and morality and
sanity of using closed source created by a company
like github vs. something like squeaksource (which I loved), but (AFAICT)
the community is faced with exactly that sort of crisis.

It takes time and effort to maintain and improve anything. People who are making
money doing so are in a better position to make that "anything" nicer
and friendlier
to end-users than people who are working on it in their/our spare
time. It's a sad
fact of life: most of us don't get to be Richard Stallman (or maybe
that's a happy
fact...whatever).


> Being a commercial application has not stopped tons of open source projects
> porting to it. But hey what do they know. I am not sure what you mean about
> sourceforge, I see still loads of open source project using it.

Have you checked out sourceforge lately?

It was obnoxious for years. Which is probably the main reason that so
many projects
have moved to github. The last time I tried to download anything from
it, I had to wade
through 3 pages of "Download and install this malware to do things you
already can!"
searching for the "Never mind, just let me download the thing I want"
link that was
buried in all the crap. In the end, I *still* wound up with 3 things I
didn't want.

I can only assume they'd have tried to auto-install if I were running Windows.

I found out the next day that they'd been acquired by some new company. I intend
to avoid them like the plague from now on.

Github might wind up in the same boat, but I think that would require some major
redesign on their part. It seems like it'd be pretty tough to insert
adware into the
`git clone` process.


> And if Git is good enough to version control Linux source, I dont see why it
> would be a big problem to Pharo.

Several years back, when people were starting to realize that tools
like Source Safe
and SVN suck, I was involved in a long conversation sort-of along these same
lines in one of the lisp communities.

Everyone was looking for the next big thing in source control. At the
time, Darcs looked
like the thing that should win, but wouldn't. Git was too big, nasty,
scary, and didn't
work on Windows, so it didn't even seem to be a contender.

Every option available was focused around old-school line-based
diff's. Which seemed
totally asinine from a lisp perspective: that was really about
modifying leaves and
branches in a tree. I probably got flamboyant about this at the time.

Finally, someone politely suggested that I go ahead and write it
myself if I thought it
was such a great idea. So I tried, and it turned out to be a lot
tougher than I'd expected.

Most of what I learned from that experience was the basic lesson that
I didn't have a
clue about lisp.

But the experience seems at least a little relevant here.

Git seems like a horrible tool for tracking changes to a smalltalk...I
dunno. I'm
such an outsider and newb here that I'm not even sure about the proper
terminology. Package, maybe? Whatever. Group of classes that you write and
maintain that implements some sort of useful batch of functionality.

At the same time...would it be worth the effort to implement something in the
same realm that would be competing with an established opponent?

Then again, sooner or later, *something* will come along that makes git look as
obsolete as git did to CVS/SVN.


> But even if it is should not be faster if
> we make extensions to git via monticello to work around these potential
> problems instead of doing a huge project from scratch ?

FWIW, I'd vote for that sort of approach. If I had any right to a vote here.
Evolution beats revolution.

Then again, I've dabbled around with what that actually means (I've been
trying to come up with a decent way to visualize branches in my very limited
spare time), and git seems to be pretty nasty to deal with under the covers.


> I think being against git is perfectly fine, wanting to trying your own
> thing is awesome, focusing on pharo specific solution is of course a good
> thing. But then not wanting to do that and use what is already out there can
> be as wise.

Git sort of arrived in the middle of a perfect storm. Everyone was feeling the
pain of source control systems that truly sucked. Linus felt that pain and
threw a solution together. Its victory may be
another great example of the way "less beats more", or it might be a
testimony to name brand inertia. Or maybe it's just that intellectuals don't
understand the wisdom of the market.

Be that as it may. I still get riled up enough about source control to
write long
rants like this one when I have better ways to spend my time. Git sucks, but
so does everything else. I don't have the time to invest in making it better.
I'm too busy working on problems that I consider more interesting.

I suspect this is the simple reality of what's going on here. If someone *does*
care enough about the ecosystem to truly invest in a VCS that makes more
sense than git, well, power to you. In the meantime, it seems like building
beautiful and intuitive UI's on top of github's existing architecture would
be more productive.

Hmm. Now there's an idea to explore.

Going back into lurk mode.

Respectfully,
James

>
> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to
> predict the future is to create it."
>

I always joke that he forgot “The only way to have a future is to finish something”  ;-)

        Marcus

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Marcus Denker <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>>
>> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to
>> predict the future is to create it."
>>
>
> I always joke that he forgot “The only way to have a future is to finish something”  ;-)
>
>         Marcus

Nice. I may steal that corollary and blog about it someday. -- James

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:42, James Ashley <[hidden email]> wrote:

explanation: “something” means really that: You do not need to “reinvent everything” to
*have* a future. You finish something (trivial, boring), and than you use that to build on top.

Yes, it will be trivial. But the, in the end tragic, fact is that anything you can *do* in the sense of really
making in real will be trivial. Else you could not do it. If you wait for that amazing thing that will be so great
that it even amazes you yourself who made it real: Sorry, this will never happen. *Everything* you can make real
will be trivial and boring by definition. “Now I know how to do it”. Yes!, so finish, and than build on top.

        Marcus

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:35, Marcus Denker <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
>>
>> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to
>> predict the future is to create it."
>>
>
> I always joke that he forgot “The only way to have a future is to finish something”  ;-)
>
> Marcus

Made my day

>
>
>

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:54, kilon alios <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yeah I cant say I agree with Mr Kay my answer to his quote will be that he is wrong and that "the best way to predict the future is to create a monopoly” .

Yes, in 2007, the iPhone showed that “We can not do anything because Microsoft” was just wrong.

        Marcus

>>> I always joke that he forgot “The only way to have a future is to finish something”  ;-)


“One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form.
‘I have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my Analytical Machine, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.’”

“After a few minutes’ talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. ‘I have never completed it,’ he said, ‘because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.’ Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, ‘It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.’ I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart.”

– Lord Moulton

(and if someone says “but he invented the modern computer": No, he did not. We know about him because Ada Lovelance helped him publishing theoretical results (after removing lots of random ramblings  about the evil
state of research funding). Babagge is *irrelevant* for today. He was rediscovered later after people re-invented his computer. If he would have finished (or just made sure to delegate it, being so trivial that should
have been really easy?) he truly would have changed *everything*.

“Sometimes you need to finish that damn trivial calculator” — me

        Marcus

On 03 Nov 2013, at 19:11, kilon alios <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I fail to see how Windows prohibited iPhone from appearing or anything in my quote saying that. They are not even in the same market.

Yet, that old market is now in a very bad shape and people talk about the “death of the desktop”.
You do not need to be in the same market if you can make the old one obsolete.

        Marcus

On 03 Nov 2013, at 19:17, Marcus Denker <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> On 03 Nov 2013, at 19:11, kilon alios <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> I fail to see how Windows prohibited iPhone from appearing or anything in my quote saying that. They are not even in the same market.
>
> Yet, that old market is now in a very bad shape and people talk about the “death of the desktop”.
> You do not need to be in the same market if you can make the old one obsolete.
>
> Marcus

I think that we should be passionate about what we are doing. Look at Scala for example. It’s becoming quite popular, and it was developed for 10 years. Pharo still has a lot of time to attract people, but we need to push something new. It’s not java like smalltalk, or something smalltalk-inspired that looks like C. For me Pharo is what had to happen to Smalltalk: evolution. Usually Smalltalk is mentioned with “80” suffix. Pharo is Smalltalk2013. And we can make it really cool, but we should stick to smalltalk philosophy. Having tools, working with objects, etc...