New Topic To Beat Into the Ground

I'm with Georg.  I don't want this newsgroup to be used to discuss
employment conditions and compensation.  I want to hear about Smalltalk.
I don't think this should turn into a forum for disgruntled former
employees to air their beefs.  It would be best to keep that off-line.

David Buck

Georg Heeg wrote:

Actually, it works a bit differently than that, and there are a couple of warts to be careful about.  Given my limited understanding of how the RB worked at the time, it was a quick and dirty hack that worked for most of the cases I care about.  There's probably a better way to do what it does.

Any time the RB would raise an additional prompt (the most common being "This will rename all N implementers"), it temporarily turns the "Show Refactoring Changes" setting on and shows the additional prompt in the title bar of the changes dialog.  Then, after completing the refactoring, it turns the setting back off.  This works most of the time.  There is at least one case (maybe more), where there are more than one prompt of this nature.  I forget exactly which case, because I run into it so rarely.  If you cancel from the first prompt, then the setting is left on, and you have to go back into the settings tool to turn it off.

Other than that, it works pretty good.  I should probably go back and see if there's a better way to implement it, but free time being what it is, it just hasn't happened yet.  I keep hoping Travis will just take it on and integrate it properly for me :-).

Randy
--
Randy Coulman
[hidden email]

..... Original Message .......
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:08:52 -0400 David Buck <[hidden email]> wrote:
>I'm with Georg.  I don't want this newsgroup to be used to discuss
>employment conditions and compensation.  I want to hear about Smalltalk.
>I don't think this should turn into a forum for disgruntled former
>employees to air their beefs.  It would be best to keep that off-line.

I agree.

One thing I would like to know about Cincom employees though is which ones
will be at Smalltalk Solutions?  I hope Cincom will be well represented.  
:-)

-Carl Gundel
http://www.libertybasic.com

David Buck wrote:
> I'm with Georg.  I don't want this newsgroup to be used to discuss
> employment conditions and compensation.  I want to hear about Smalltalk.
> I don't think this should turn into a forum for disgruntled former
> employees to air their beefs.  It would be best to keep that off-line.

I'm with you on this,

I'm not interested in seeing reasons for departure of specific persons
hashed out here either, I'm interested in knowing what the impact on
Cincom/VW is.

As is not unusual when I start such a discussion I got a couple of
private responses, these gave me a much more positive feeling about how
the crew is progressing from here.

I wish Cincom people would go on the record here with that kind of
background information. It would be a pity if we keep running circles in
this meta-discussion and leave with a hangover in the end.

My impression is that more positive news is available but Cincom shies
away from pushing that out (possibly because it is hard to do that
without naming names?).


R
-

Georg,

I will agree with you that this is just a company matter, but here we
have a product with strong community backing and most employees are also
community members, where we care about each other and specially we care
about future of our common cause: Smalltalk.

Not to mention that Eliot complained in general about under budgeting VW
development and not specifically about his salary. His complaint
therefore concerns the community for sure and is therefore a valid
matter for discussion on this list.

Best regards
Janko

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

Personally I think its inappropriate for former employees to be publicly commenting on their views of the hiring and compensation packages at any company.

If someone from Cincom management had posted in VWNC or on a blog about the work ethic, qualifications, personality, eating habits, whatever about a former employee, that former employee would, most likely, have sued Cincom for negatively impacting their future employment prospects--and rightly so.

What has happened here is comments made by former employees have negatively impacted Cincom's customers' faith in the company. Therefore, possibly jeopardizing Cincom's future revenue prospects. It doesn't sound like the former employees have given Cincom the same respect that, in my opinion, Cincom has given them.

Dirty laundry and hurt feelings should not be aired in public by either side of the employee-employer relationship.

Sean

At 10:28 AM 3/28/2007, Carl Gundel wrote:

..... Original Message .......
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:08:52 -0400 David Buck <[hidden email]> wrote:
>I'm with Georg.  I don't want this newsgroup to be used to discuss
>employment conditions and compensation.  I want to hear about Smalltalk.
>I don't think this should turn into a forum for disgruntled former
>employees to air their beefs.  It would be best to keep that off-line.

I agree.

One thing I would like to know about Cincom employees though is which ones
will be at Smalltalk Solutions?  I hope Cincom will be well represented. 
:-)

I believe the full list is me, Martin Kobetic, Travis Griggs, Andres Valloud, Mark Grinnell, Michael Lucas-Smith, Suzanne Fortman, Jim Robertson, Arden Thomas.

This may not be the full list (I'm still attending a conference in
the UK right now), but I will be there, as will Alan Knight, Suzanne
Fortman, Arden Thomas, Michael Lucas-Smith (who will have just joined
us at that point), Travis Griggs, and Martin Kobetic.  We will also
have one or more representatives from sales present in the booth.

At 10:28 AM 3/28/2007, you wrote:
<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>
James Robertson, Product Manager, Cincom Smalltalk
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView

Yes I'll be there. So you can come and tell me all your cr^H^H wonderful
UI ideas. And if you don't like my response, you can go try again with
Travis :)

I'm looking forward to seeing every one again. Even if it does take a
trip half way around the world!

Cheers,
Michael

James Robertson wrote:

 
Eliot and Vasilli have been with Cincom for a long time--as have most of
the developers there. My understanding is that they left for better
opportunities. Keep in mind how such a large collection of talent was
assembled in the first place--they were driven by intense personal
desires and drawn together for the opportunity to achieve personal
visions. They've achieved their success and likely have new personal
goals.

To have kept a group of such talent together for so long speaks well of
Cincom. There often is some internal strife that triggers a departure,
but consider how little attrition Cincom has experienced; it is likely
"death of a thousand cuts" rather than any significant change at Cincom.
I wouldn't turn to Cincom for an explanation because they probably
weren't responsible for the decision and may not have thought they were
able to resolve any concerns.

That kind of talent is simply hard to retain. This attrition should be
considered a sign of renewed strength and opportunity. For some, vision
is renewed faster than strength is realized, and there are appealing
opportunities everywhere. For others, strengths are expected to be
turned into investment rewards. Personnel changes like this have
immediate costs that get attention, but consider the emerging strengths
that enabled these changes to happen. This is not a sign of the next
demise of Smalltalk; this is a sign of renewed strength from investments
over the past several years.

If you want to know what happened then consult to the individuals that
decide to leave. I expect you'll find their concerns are focused on
small or vague things and they are excited about new opportunities. If
financial concerns are mentioned then that is a sign that they perceive
others are benefiting more from renewed Smalltalk strength. It should be
obvious that these guys didn't do all this work just for the money.

Paul Baumann

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Smith [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:33 AM
To: VWNC,
Subject: Re: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the
Ground)



James Robertson wrote:
> Ok, let me clarify then.  I don't want to shut down other people
> talking about this.  At the same time, please don't expect a steady
> stream of official response.  I've made an "official" response, and
> that's as far as I think we (Cincom) need to go in a public forum.
I am as interested and concerned about this as anyone -- our whole
company is based on VW.
However, at this point, james is caught between a rock and ...
If he says everthing is OK, the discussion continues and people want
"real" assurance.  Not sure what he can say that might change how people
feel "right now" -- time might help that.
If on the other hand he said "everything is falling apart", everyone
would believe him!
So he is stuck.

As much as I would like more (and more) re-assurance, I can't get it
because nothing said would provide that, so I suggest we wait.  We will
know if more leave -- we know some good people have moved in, so
presumably they received some assurance first -- maybe that is the best
we can do for now.

>> such a topic, it would be less well placed on say c.l.s.
>>
>> I also want to hold up a mirror: if this discussion where happening
>> in the blogosphere you could probably whip out a couple of slides
>> with bullet points on how stifling such discussion is the wrong thing
to do.
>> Why not apply that stance toward this mail list?
>>
>>
>> Another way that this irks me is that you are a guest here, this is
>> not Cincom's list - it is our list.
>> Putting up oukazes about what is permitted here rubs me the wrong way

>> (it's not like we're handling a troll here, the principal players are

>> known to me as being sufficiently level-headed to handle this subject

--
Dennis Smith                         +1 416.798.7948
Cherniak Software Development Corporation   Fax: +1 416.798.0948
509-2001 Sheppard Avenue East        [hidden email]
Toronto, ON M2J 4Z8              sip:[hidden email]
Canada         http://www.CherniakSoftware.com
Entrance off Yorkland Blvd south of Sheppard Ave east of the DVP
 
 
 
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----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:44 AM

Subject: Re: AW: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the Ground)

Personally I think its inappropriate for former employees to be publicly commenting on their views of the hiring and compensation packages at any company.

If someone from Cincom management had posted in VWNC or on a blog about the work ethic, qualifications, personality, eating habits, whatever about a former employee, that former employee would, most likely, have sued Cincom for negatively impacting their future employment prospects--and rightly so.

What has happened here is comments made by former employees have negatively impacted Cincom's customers' faith in the company. Therefore, possibly jeopardizing Cincom's future revenue prospects. It doesn't sound like the former employees have given Cincom the same respect that, in my opinion, Cincom has given them.

Dirty laundry and hurt feelings should not be aired in public by either side of the employee-employer relationship.

Sean

+1

Things like these happen to all companies. People change direction. People make personal choices. People get tired of things. Paying for a product does not give us right to know internal workings of Cincom, we already know more than one normally would in this situation, and I for one would be very disappointed if my previous employees would speak publicly about reasons for me moving on for example.

Cheers!

-Boris
(Sent from a BlackBerry)

----- Original Message -----
From: Georg Heeg <[hidden email]>
To: 'Janko Mivšek' <[hidden email]>; 'VWNC' <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wed Mar 28 05:35:09 2007
Subject: AW: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the Ground)

Janko,

I strongly disagree. I would always subject to public discussions about
personnel decisions like joining a company, leaving a company, getting
raises, getting more or less holidays and any company or personal reasons in
this respect.

It has been part of most employment contracts world wide that any this
information has to be kept private. Even in public authorities like city
councils personnel discussions are defined to be under non disclosure. Only
final decisions may get publicized. Thus any such desire you expressed of
making private decision of any company or of any person public is clearly
off limits.

Georg

Georg Heeg eK, Dortmund und Köthen, HR Dortmund A 12812
Tel. +49-3496-214328, Fax +49-3496-214712

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Janko Mivšek [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 28. März 2007 13:33
> An: 'VWNC'
> Betreff: Re: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the
> Ground)
>
> I completely agree with Reinout and yes, we, both as customers and even
> more as passionate Smalltalkers would like to know honestly, what is
> happening and what are the real reasons for exodus of such knowledgeable
> and important Smalltalkers as Eliot and Vasilli are.
>
> Best regards
> JAnko
>
> Reinout Heeck wrote:
> > James Robertson wrote:
> >> I call this off topic; if anyone wants to email me privately, feel free
> >>
> > Then I want to put my foot down - cordially ;-)
> >
> > People here seem to want to discuss the recent personnel changes -
> > awkward as that may be - in public.
> > Going over the options I'd say this forum is the most focused one for
> > such a topic, it would be less well placed on say c.l.s.
> >
> > I also want to hold up a mirror: if this discussion where happening in
> > the blogosphere you could probably whip out a couple of slides with
> > bullet points on how stifling such discussion is the wrong thing to do.
> > Why not apply that stance toward this mail list?
> >
> >
> > Another way that this irks me is that you are a guest here, this is not
> > Cincom's list - it is our list.
> > Putting up oukazes about what is permitted here rubs me the wrong way
> > (it's not like we're handling a troll here, the principal players are
> > known to me as being sufficiently level-headed to handle this subject
> > without it becoming a slugfest).
> >
> >
> > I'd say lighten up, the subject is awkward but that's also all there is
> > to it - bite through the sour apple, it won't kill you ;-)
> >
> >
> > R
> > -
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Janko Mivšek
> AIDA/Web
> Smalltalk Web Application Server
> http://www.aidaweb.si

I did mean to say employers by the way, so much for R and E being on the same key ;)

Cheers!

-Boris
(Sent from a BlackBerry)

----- Original Message -----
From: Boris Popov
To: '[hidden email]' <[hidden email]>; '[hidden email]' <[hidden email]>; '[hidden email]' <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wed Mar 28 08:10:40 2007
Subject: Re: AW: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the Ground)

+1

Things like these happen to all companies. People change direction. People make personal choices. People get tired of things. Paying for a product does not give us right to know internal workings of Cincom, we already know more than one normally would in this situation, and I for one would be very disappointed if my previous employees would speak publicly about reasons for me moving on for example.

Cheers!

-Boris
(Sent from a BlackBerry)

----- Original Message -----
From: Georg Heeg <[hidden email]>
To: 'Janko Mivšek' <[hidden email]>; 'VWNC' <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wed Mar 28 05:35:09 2007
Subject: AW: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the Ground)

Janko,

I strongly disagree. I would always subject to public discussions about
personnel decisions like joining a company, leaving a company, getting
raises, getting more or less holidays and any company or personal reasons in
this respect.

It has been part of most employment contracts world wide that any this
information has to be kept private. Even in public authorities like city
councils personnel discussions are defined to be under non disclosure. Only
final decisions may get publicized. Thus any such desire you expressed of
making private decision of any company or of any person public is clearly
off limits.

Georg

Georg Heeg eK, Dortmund und Köthen, HR Dortmund A 12812
Tel. +49-3496-214328, Fax +49-3496-214712

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Janko Mivšek [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 28. März 2007 13:33
> An: 'VWNC'
> Betreff: Re: Cincom personnel changes (Re: New Topic To Beat Into the
> Ground)
>
> I completely agree with Reinout and yes, we, both as customers and even
> more as passionate Smalltalkers would like to know honestly, what is
> happening and what are the real reasons for exodus of such knowledgeable
> and important Smalltalkers as Eliot and Vasilli are.
>
> Best regards
> JAnko
>
> Reinout Heeck wrote:
> > James Robertson wrote:
> >> I call this off topic; if anyone wants to email me privately, feel free
> >>
> > Then I want to put my foot down - cordially ;-)
> >
> > People here seem to want to discuss the recent personnel changes -
> > awkward as that may be - in public.
> > Going over the options I'd say this forum is the most focused one for
> > such a topic, it would be less well placed on say c.l.s.
> >
> > I also want to hold up a mirror: if this discussion where happening in
> > the blogosphere you could probably whip out a couple of slides with
> > bullet points on how stifling such discussion is the wrong thing to do.
> > Why not apply that stance toward this mail list?
> >
> >
> > Another way that this irks me is that you are a guest here, this is not
> > Cincom's list - it is our list.
> > Putting up oukazes about what is permitted here rubs me the wrong way
> > (it's not like we're handling a troll here, the principal players are
> > known to me as being sufficiently level-headed to handle this subject
> > without it becoming a slugfest).
> >
> >
> > I'd say lighten up, the subject is awkward but that's also all there is
> > to it - bite through the sour apple, it won't kill you ;-)
> >
> >
> > R
> > -
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Janko Mivšek
> AIDA/Web
> Smalltalk Web Application Server
> http://www.aidaweb.si

I think concern about personnel changes is an
expression of concern about something else, which can
be dealt with more directly.

James Robertson wrote "How can you bank your business
on Cincom Smalltalk? Look at our delivery record since
1999. We've delivered major new functionality, and
delivered on a regular basis."

If new functionality hasn't been delivered fast enough
for our needs over the past 5 years then we already
have the information we need, we just need to act on
it.

If our needs have been met,then personnel changes may
cause disruption but far less than changes in our own
teams.

When James Robertson announces new hires on his blog
it might incorrectly give the impression that the
Cincom Smalltalk team is growing - but announcing
hires and remaining silent when people leave is what
everyone else does.




--- Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]> wrote:



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
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The departures were announced by those who left, why keep repeating the same thing. I find the action of immediately putting the plan in motion to find suitable replacements more reassuring anyway.

I'm leaving this thread now, enough's been said, move on.

Cheers!

-Boris

--
+1.604.689.0322
DeepCove Labs Ltd.
4th floor 595 Howe Street
Vancouver, Canada V6C 2T5
http://tinyurl.com/r7uw4

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Thank you.

Hello...

JR> This may not be the full list (I'm still attending a conference in
JR> the UK right now), but I will be there, as will Alan Knight,
JR> Suzanne Fortman, Arden Thomas, Michael Lucas-Smith (who will have
JR> just joined us at that point), Travis Griggs, and Martin Kobetic.
JR> We will also have one or more representatives from sales present
JR> in the booth.

I will be there as well, and I think it will be a great event.  I
wanted to share a couple things that I am really looking forward to at
Smalltalk Solutions.

Some friends of mine will be coming to STS from Argentina to give a
talk on SUnit Based Validation, a framework I told them about some
years ago.  The presentation at STS is called Heavy Validation, and
they are extremely happy with the results.  It is a great success
story to share with others, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

As a side note, since we are such nice people we will be visiting
Argentina later in May.  This trip has caused tremendous interest.
Some people, working in amazing Smalltalk projects, will even travel
hundreds of miles to meet with us.  In addition, we have already
scheduled three presentations in two colleges that teach Smalltalk as
part of their curriculum.

One of the presentations is scheduled as part of the afternoon cycle in
which, some years ago, I was sitting a few seats away from Stephen
Smale.  This was the day after I asked him a whole bunch of questions
regarding his talk on chaos theory in the sibling, evening talk cycle.
Did I mention Stephen Smale is a Fields medalist, i.e.: winner of the
mathematics equivalent of a Nobel prize?

I am very aware that it takes more than one party to be able to
organize this kind of events, and I am extremely grateful to those in
Argentina for the efforts and energy they have put into making these
things possible.

But I digress --- there's more exciting stuff coming up at Smalltalk
Solutions as well: I will be hosting the Smalltalk Solutions 2007
Coding Contest.  I'd like to invite you to participate for fun as well
as because you can win very interesting Apple equipment.  There will
be a qualifier round in which you will have 10 days (including two
weekends) to win a place at the finals to be held live at STS.  I
would really like to share the challenge I thought of with you, as I
think it will be a lot of fun!  If you'd like to participate, please
send me an email at [hidden email] to register.

So... who said Smalltalk wasn't thriving or something?  I believe it
is in us to make the community we want to have become a reality, and I
am definitely not missing out on any of this extraordinary fun that is
so much within our reach!  See you in Toronto and in Buenos Aires :).

PS: let's not miss the oportunity of meeting each other before STS by
using the Smalltalk World Tour wiki page here:

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/CincomSmalltalkWiki/Smalltalk+World+Tour

--
Best regards,
 Andres                            mailto:[hidden email]

I agree that Ad hoc is usefull and should not be deleted.
For example if you want to deploy a Glorp Application on multiple
platforms you sometimes run into reserved words conflicts.
Date as a colum name is reserved on some database but not all. A copy
paste between Transcript and Ad-hoc easily tracks these.
Also notice that big organisations often have very few machines with
full database administration tools installed. In these cases Ad-hoc
remains a valuable swiss army knife.

Another improvement of tools could be to add a menu item under painter
rolling the ImageReader imageFromFile:toClass:selector: method.

@+Maarten,

Diane Savereide a écrit :