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Hi
I've recently become a Squeak lurker (that means I've downloaded the VM, several books, tutorials and done some basic tests but haven't taken the plunge...yet). I'm a Ruby user (not programmer) and I recently was introduced to Squeak via Croquet (It looked interesting). I was pretty wowed by Squeak (can you say 'Introspective Dynamic Objects Playground'?) but after some research I've come up with some questions:
1) I have to be honest here: is it alive? I have been to the website (seaside and squeak both have good sites by my standards) but apart from a few (good) projects I'm not seeing a hell of a lot from Squeak as a whole (see Q.3). I'm not abandoning Ruby (I love Ruby for many reasons) but I intend to really get into Smalltalk. I just want to know if the ship is sinking (or just temporarily stalled) before I board.
2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside? What I mean is, can the VM run headless (is there such a status), as a service or in some fashion that does not require an account to be logged in? Forgive my ignorance, but I know very little about Squeak in terms of its capabilities. If my question is not relevant, how then is Squeak deployed in enterprise environments? I guess what I'm asking is the following: I currently deploy IT apps using Apache(serve static content and redirect dynamic pages), Mongrel/Rails/Ruby (Application service)) on Linux/OS X. Can I do the same with Squeak/Seaside? I've seen enterprise apps with Seaside but they may be on other Smalltalk VM/engines.
3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? What sites do people hang out at? I joined the list to see more of the community but I'd like to know the regular watering holes. 4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. Well, mainstream is probably the wrong word. I just think that this thing is Gold. Really. Seriously. When I started using Ruby I thought 'Why aren't more people using this?'. That happened to be just a matter of time. But Squeak (and indeed smalltalk) has been around for a while. Why hasn't it shot up like a rocket? Is it because it IS viewed as a toy? I must admit that I did not think much of Squeak because I saw a screenshot of some toy-looking things on a screen and didn't think it could do anything serious (boy, was I wrong). Does it need marketing? More focus on business objects (I have fancy ideas about that but...) so that users and developers turn their heads? I don't know but maybe you do. Does it just need a killer app or killer promoter? Ruby was slowly gaining attention but Rails shoved it forward. I think Seaside has a lot more potential than Rails because it is sooooo cool. But is that just a Smalltalk thing? Will it just go the way of the dodo because the market decided that .NET was so good (it sucks. so. bad)? I'd hate to see that. At the moment, we use Microsoft Sharepoint for our document storage and I cannot express how absolutely crap that product is. I could write something better with Rails and I ain't a programmer(I can only imagine what could be done with Seaside). My place of employ uses it because we buy Microsoft. The. Worst. Reason. Ever. I know everyone does it. But it's @#$%*& wrong! I got my Rails apps in the door because I showed them I could write an app in a month that they didn't even think they could do. Maybe Squeak just needs a loud voice. I dunno.
Anyhoo, I have more questions but I think I just wanted some opinions on these for the moment. Regards Sven Schott P.S. Any Squeakers in Australia?
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El 4/8/08 7:58 AM, "Sven Schott" <[hidden email]> escribió: > is it alive? and you was infected... >2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside? If you company wish pay Microsoft crap, the answer is NO >3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? Size matters ? >4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. Some of us enjoy being Rebels without a cause Edgar _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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> > is it alive?
Yes, but with a much smaller community than Ruby/Rails. > >2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside? Depends on the enterprise. VisualWorks has more databases and connectivity support. But Ramon Leon has blogged about working with Windows in the enterprise. I've deployed the old pluggable web server stuff in enterprises back in the late 90s to run wikis on NT. Think I made it a service, but not headless. Know headless is possible. > >3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? The community is small but has some incredible minds. Seaside has helped growth. I get the pulse of the community through email lists, watching IRC logs (never seem to get on live), subscribing to Squeak related feeds (like Ramon's blog and James Robertson's blog which has a lot of VW stuff, also covers Squeak <-- the larger Smalltalk community seems to participate in Squeak as well). > >4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. Randal is probably doing the most visible work here: http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/library/posts/page/1/ But Squeak by Example publication and the forthcoming Lulu book on Seaside are amazing as well. _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by Sven Schott
Hi
2008/4/8, Sven Schott <[hidden email]>: > Hi > > I've recently become a Squeak lurker (that means I've downloaded the VM, > several books, tutorials and done some basic tests but haven't taken the > plunge...yet). I'm a Ruby user (not programmer) and I recently was > introduced to Squeak via Croquet (It looked interesting). I was pretty wowed > by Squeak (can you say 'Introspective Dynamic Objects Playground'?) but > after some research I've come up with some questions: > > > 1) I have to be honest here: is it alive? I have been to the website > (seaside and squeak both have good sites by my standards) but apart from a > few (good) projects I'm not seeing a hell of a lot from Squeak as a whole > (see Q.3). I'm not abandoning Ruby (I love Ruby for many reasons) but I > intend to really get into Smalltalk. I just want to know if the ship is > sinking (or just temporarily stalled) before I board. but "commercial" projects exists (Sophie, Croquet, Seaside, Plopp, Aida, DabbleDB, Auctomatic ...) I don't think the ship is sinking at all ;) Ruby helped ST get more attention recently but the comunity which is small is really kind and morevoer full of talented people (I don't count myself in ;) ). Moreover it's not an old technology but a technology that is present since 1980 (even more). I might be biased but I feel 2008 will be a good year for smalltalk/squeak/seaside/gemstone... > > > 2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside? > What I mean is, can the VM run headless (is there such a status), headless yes > service or in some fashion that does not require an account to be logged in? > Forgive my ignorance, but I know very little about Squeak in terms of its > capabilities. If my question is not relevant, how then is Squeak deployed in > enterprise environments? I guess what I'm asking is the following: I > currently deploy IT apps using Apache(serve static content and redirect > dynamic pages), Mongrel/Rails/Ruby (Application service)) on Linux/OS X. Can > I do the same with Squeak/Seaside? I've seen enterprise apps with Seaside > but they may be on other Smalltalk VM/engines. see http://onsmalltalk.com > 3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? What sites do > people hang out at? I joined the list to see more of the community but I'd > like to know the regular watering holes. there is #squeak ... > > > 4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. Well, > mainstream is probably the wrong word. I just think that this thing is Gold. > Really. Seriously. When I started using Ruby I thought 'Why aren't more > people using this?'. That happened to be just a matter of time. But Squeak > (and indeed smalltalk) has been around for a while. Why hasn't it shot up > like a rocket? Is it because it IS viewed as a toy? I must admit that I did Not mainstream I guess this is not possible, but at least visible and taken seriously. Some people try to do that... I'm thinking of Randal Schwartz who just got a seaside presentation accepted at OSCON. I'm sure this won't come alone :) > > Sven Schott > > > P.S. Any Squeakers in Australia? They should be but this is a big land;) Cédrick _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by Sven Schott
> P.S. Any Squeakers in Australia?
> Where about are you ? I'm french but I spent one year in SA in 2000 :) Really nice country ... See you Cédrick _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by cedreek
>>>>> "cdrick" == cdrick <[hidden email]> writes:
cdrick> I'm thinking of Randal cdrick> Schwartz who just got a seaside presentation accepted at OSCON. I'm cdrick> sure this won't come alone :) I'm also going to get a Smalltalk BOF at OSCON so watch for it when you get there. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 <[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by Sven Schott
Hi Sven,
Yes, I'm in Oz, on the Gold Coast. I'm not an expert on Squeak by any means, but I'm using it in maths education, and thinking seriously about using it for a PhD in Maths Education in a couple of years. I know of one other guy (a PHP wizard) who was pretty wowed by Seaside and Squeak, I think he's using it for prototyping. Last I heard he was in Melbourne. I don't think it really matters where people are geographically these days in a project like this, as no-one is further away than an email or a blog. I think that as more people realise that the monstrosity called Java doesn't really provide the real benefits of OOP (and that it is too hard to get real work done with it - I object to objects that have to advertise their interfaces) there will be more and more people turning to real Dynamic Objects. We are only just starting to see a turn from Java/C# in the Universities here, so I expect that we'll see ST starting to get noticed again here in about 5 years. Now is the time to get a head start. , IMHO. Yrs, John > > Anyhoo, I have more questions but I think I just wanted some opinions on > these for the moment. > > > Regards > > > Sven Schott > > > P.S. Any Squeakers in Australia? > _______________________________________________ > Beginners mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners > _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by Edgar J. De Cleene
Yep. :) >2) Can Squeak be used as the engine in enterprise with and without Seaside? Nah, I can convince people to use other things. The fact that we use Microsoft crap is just something that pisses me off. I just want to know if I can deploy Squeak apps the same way I can do ruby apps.
>3) Is the community small? Big? Growing? Shrinking rapidly? It does. Critical mass (whatever that is for a language). Small is fine provided it is small and growing, not small and shrinking. >4) Is there any push or drive to making Squeak more mainstream. I'm a rebel with a cause. :) _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners |
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In reply to this post by cedreek
and I'm itching to play now. Curse me being at work and all! BTW Thanks everybody for the replies. They are most appreciated. I'm kind of excited now. I feel like that first time I understood Ruby and saw what it could do. I think I'm going to have a good time.
Sven
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