[squeak-dev] Squeak vision

On 01.07.2009, at 19:06, Igor Stasenko wrote:
Err, isn't that exactly what I wrote?

- Bert -

2009/7/1 Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]>:

Hello Bert!

It is truly beautiful to see your devotion to a vision. I respect
that. The problem has never been eToys or even this vision.

The overall considerations should remind us the extremely limited
resources our community has, going smaller and smaller as people move
to forks, and that it struggles attracting new members. Focusing on
children at this point would be a terrible mistake, IMHO.

Which part of limited resources don't you understand? Why can't we
just have a great system rather than focusing on
yet-another-killer-app? Let eToys be eToys and let Squeak be Squeak.

Igor said, I think, that eToys can be a package on top of Squeak. It
should be perfectly fine for everybody.

Let me also speak from the heart, Bert. I have been introduced to
Squeak around 2001. There is no contribution from me and I could never
manage to do anything more than prototypes in Squeak. As I grow older,
and the experience kicks in, I realize that several requirements have
to be met in order to make it possible for me to use Squeak.

How come it is so easy to develop prototypes in Squeak but then it
feels flat when it's time to do the real thing? Who can afford to
develop not reusable prototypes nowadays? I certainly cannot! When
it's time to wrap up Squeak into a product and deploy it, it turns out
bitter. It always translates as real deep hard work and possibly more
than the initial project.

I dream about using Squeak for my projects. My bread and butter is
about designing projects and I have thousands of pages about ideas
over the last 13 years. I still hardly can fit Squeak in that. Squeak
is a designer's dream! But it's a business nightmare. What the heck!
Even the wonderful seaside wouldn't be an option, why should I retrain
my staff who already know, say, Ruby, to use the unapproachable,
weird, childish Squeak when there is Ruby on Rails? I don't have that
kind of money to spare on a bet.

That is the reality of small businesses in North America. Thank you
for your consideration.

You want eToys? Get on board with eToys. The visionary people have
left the building. The truth is that by leaving Squeak, the great
minds have made a self admission, a confession, that Squeak was no
longer a vision (but, perhaps, the concretization of a vision), and
they have moved on another vision... something related to the far
fetched future. We should understand what has happened, embrace the
reality and also move on to something more tengible for us in the near
future.

Finally, your contribution to Squeak has been noticed over the years
and you're much more important to the community than I am. HOWEVER, I
might never be able to seriously use Squeak and contribute to the
community if I do not speak up right now... while the community is
listening. It is my sincere wish to use Squeak on professional basis.

Best regards,
Ian

--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

At Wed, 1 Jul 2009 17:16:38 -0400,
Ian Trudel wrote:
  Ian, if you could spare some time to read...

  - Bert knows a bit about small businesses in Germany, and I could
    say he know a bit about small businesses in North America.  At
    Impara, they shipped products done in Squeak, and he is well
    connected some people who do products in Squeak in North America,
    as some of his code and contribution are part of them.

  - Bert is on board with Etoys, especially for the latest round of
    development.  I should say that he was the main driver for the
    latest round of development.

  - At the Viewpoints Research Institute (which is in North America
    and with the visionary), quite a few people are paid to extend and
    maintain Etoys.  And Bert is one of them.  Yes, we are now trying
    to minimize the commitment and pretty much have shifted the focus
    to the "new" things, but if you say "leaving" Squeak, it doesn't
    click as reality.

  - Squeak itself has never been a "vision" from the beginning.
    Squeak was created a (temporary) vehicle to reach a goal, and goal
    was to make an authoring environment for children of all ages.

  - I could say that Squeak left the visionary people when more people
    in the community get only interested in "grown up" parts and
    themselves.

And not to this email but:

  - Etoys got a new round of attention because of the OLPC project,
    but it's been maintained and around before it, and has been used
    by kids around the world in various forms.  The one in the
    mainstream images weren't working well, but that doesn't mean it
    was dead.

  BTW, what do you know about the "something related to the far
fetched future"?

-- Yoshiki

Hi Ian,

Ian Trudel wrote:
You seem to think that the resources (i.e. programmer time) of this
community are available for whatever the community or the leadership
decides. This is completely wrong. The community has never hired Squeak
programming time. Each of us is free to contribute (or not) to Squeak
with code as we prefer. This also includes several companies, small,
medium sized and big. Most contributors, both individuals and companies,
do whatever is good / useful for them, and later contribute whatever
might be useful for others.

This means that in order for your vision to become a reality, you need
to work on it or pay somebody to work on it. For instance, Cuis exists
because I wanted such a system, so I built it. If it is useful for
others, great. If not, at least I did get what I wanted in the first place.

This is at the very heart of open source projects.

> Let me also speak from the heart, Bert. I have been introduced to
> Squeak around 2001. There is no contribution from me and I could never
> manage to do anything more than prototypes in Squeak. As I grow older,
> and the experience kicks in, I realize that several requirements have
> to be met in order to make it possible for me to use Squeak.
>  

Perhaps some of the forks suits your needs. If not, you'd better start
learning how to make Squeak work for you (that's the whole idea of
Smalltalk, right from the beginning). If you can not do it, and you
can't pay for somebody to do what you need, and nobody is willing to do
it, then perhaps Squeak is not for you.

If Ruby is better for you, what's the problem with using it?

> That is the reality of small businesses in North America. Thank you
> for your consideration.
>  

Are you saying that small businesses in USA can not use Squeak? My
employer is a counter example of that idea. Perhaps you'd hire people
here! There are many seasoned squeakers who charge reasonable rates,
ready to work for you. I'm one of them.

> You want eToys? Get on board with eToys. The visionary people have
> left the building. The truth is that by leaving Squeak, the great
> minds have made a self admission, a confession, that Squeak was no
> longer a vision (but, perhaps, the concretization of a vision), and
> they have moved on another vision... something related to the far
> fetched future. We should understand what has happened, embrace the
> reality and also move on to something more tengible for us in the near
> future.
>  

Hehe. You're saying that the visionary people, the great minds have left
Squeak? I'm in this community since 1997. I can tell you. Many great
people left the community. But the vast majority of them are still here
after 12 years!

> Finally, your contribution to Squeak has been noticed over the years
> and you're much more important to the community than I am. HOWEVER, I
> might never be able to seriously use Squeak and contribute to the
> community if I do not speak up right now... while the community is
> listening. It is my sincere wish to use Squeak on professional basis.
>
> Best regards,
> Ian

Then start doing it!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Very well said Juan. Thank you.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Juan Vuletich wrote:

2009/7/1 Yoshiki Ohshima <[hidden email]>:
>  Ian, if you could spare some time to read...

Thank you for your concise but insightful pointers. Let me also make
it clear that it has nothing to do with the man. I am sure that Bert
is a great man. It was not an attack in any way. I simply have
concerns that I openly voice with the community.

>  - Bert knows a bit about small businesses in Germany, and I could
>    say he know a bit about small businesses in North America.  At
>    Impara, they shipped products done in Squeak, and he is well
>    connected some people who do products in Squeak in North America,
>    as some of his code and contribution are part of them.

Great. That would be really interesting to learn more about that.
Especially in term of deployment, localization, maintenance and
support in general. Are those open systems or close products?

>  - Bert is on board with Etoys, especially for the latest round of
>    development.  I should say that he was the main driver for the
>    latest round of development.

I've understood that.

>  - At the Viewpoints Research Institute (which is in North America
>    and with the visionary), quite a few people are paid to extend and
>    maintain Etoys.  And Bert is one of them.  Yes, we are now trying
>    to minimize the commitment and pretty much have shifted the focus
>    to the "new" things, but if you say "leaving" Squeak, it doesn't
>    click as reality.

Yes. No. Maybe. I am at distance and go back and forth on the mailing
list. It might only be a feeling? What seems clear is that they are no
longer devoted to Squeak, as they were __before__. Squeak has taken
less importance in their agenda. Isn't it true?

>  - Squeak itself has never been a "vision" from the beginning.
>    Squeak was created a (temporary) vehicle to reach a goal, and goal
>    was to make an authoring environment for children of all ages.

I understand that. Could we consider Squeak to have its own roadmap?
As a community consensus, we should be able to decide on that. The
current lack of direction clearly and beyond doubts outlines the fact
that Squeak has fallen off the radar of its previous vision. So, if
Squeak does not change, the community does and asks for something
else.

>  - I could say that Squeak left the visionary people when more people
>    in the community get only interested in "grown up" parts and
>    themselves.

Possibly. They were however at the head of the project. Doesn't it
tell you something?


2009/7/1 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>:
> You seem to think that the resources (i.e. programmer time) of this
> community are available for whatever the community or the leadership
> decides. This is completely wrong. The community has never hired Squeak
> programming time. Each of us is free to contribute (or not) to Squeak with
> code as we prefer. This also includes several companies, small, medium sized
> and big. Most contributors, both individuals and companies, do whatever is
> good / useful for them, and later contribute whatever might be useful for
> others.

Obviously! And this is why the community should consider elements that
will keep the community stimulated into contributing, such as, an
environment friendly to newcomers, simple contribution process, a
sense of direction, and so on. Squeak did so well in that area that it
gave us Cuis? I feel, perhaps, that I am a stranger to the community
with so little understanding.

> This is at the very heart of open source projects.

> Perhaps some of the forks suits your needs. If not, you'd better start
> learning how to make Squeak work for you (that's the whole idea of
> Smalltalk, right from the beginning). If you can not do it, and you can't
> pay for somebody to do what you need, and nobody is willing to do it, then
> perhaps Squeak is not for you.

Hardly any news there.

> If Ruby is better for you, what's the problem with using it?

Ruby is all right. It's just not Smalltalk. Squeak really gives an
edge when it comes to develop prototypes. And, yes, it's possible to
customize a lot without even writing a single word to the list for
years.

> Are you saying that small businesses in USA can not use Squeak? My employer
> is a counter example of that idea. Perhaps you'd hire people here! There are
> many seasoned squeakers who charge reasonable rates, ready to work for you.
> I'm one of them.

I am not saying anything like this. It is only according to the
reality of my business. And North America also includes Québec, for
which I am from.

> Hehe. You're saying that the visionary people, the great minds have left
> Squeak? I'm in this community since 1997. I can tell you. Many great people
> left the community. But the vast majority of them are still here after 12
> years!

Yes, you're right. I can see it too.


> Then start doing it!

Thank you for the obvious?!


Please, guys, whether you like my opinion or not, I am simply speaking
honestly about my experience, frustrations and hopes with Squeak. I
completely respect the different experience and opinion from people in
the community. But you know what Juan? How about not telling off
people when they openly talk about their experience? Then the
community could open up with each other a little bit more. I've been
silent for 8 years. You can endure a little bit of rant once every 8
years, can you?

Ian.

--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

Ian Trudel wrote:
Your message wasn't exactly "a little bit of rant"... It was more like
the "I know nothing about this, but if you don't do it my way, you all
will go to hell" speech we hear here from time to time. We heard it many
times, always by people who never contributed at all.

I am not an Etoys user. I actually tried to convince others to remove
Etoys from Squeak and failed. Thus, Cuis was born. But I don't welcome
that kind of speech.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

2009/7/1 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>:
> Your message wasn't exactly "a little bit of rant"... It was more like the
> "I know nothing about this, but if you don't do it my way, you all will go
> to hell" speech we hear here from time to time. We heard it many times,
> always by people who never contributed at all.

I actually thought that I would be the one to go to hell. =)

More seriously, it's not even about that. I know that you guys don't
care whether I am here or not. Doesn't mean that the community has no
interest to read about the perspective of others. And, you know, don't
blame me for not contributing. It's an extreme sport to do so but it's
being discussed by the Squeak Oversight Board and we will see what
happen then.

> I am not an Etoys user. I actually tried to convince others to remove Etoys
> from Squeak and failed. Thus, Cuis was born. But I don't welcome that kind
> of speech.

It doesn't mean that everything I wrote has no foundations. I thought
that you would have known better for someone who has created a fork.
All I am hoping from my messages is a little bit of consideration from
the community. Whether changes should be brought or not is clearly not
up to me. I'll live with decisions taken by the community. But,
clearly, you don't welcome my words and you did feel unwelcoming.

> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich

Best regards,
Ian


--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

2009/7/2 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>:
No No No. Don't let us start over again!
By reading this message, it sounds literally:
- you don't like Squeak? Do like me: Fix things what you don't like
..... in own fork.

(don't let me remind you where all this current discussion started
from: about forks & minds leaking from squeak).

Unlike the troll who appeared recently on Seaside mailing list, Ian
proposes things strictly in a constructive manner.
I don't see why his points should be ignored simply because he's not
contributing to squeak, especially when he speaking about things which
prevents him to start contributing.

Of course, we can assume that there is something wrong with the rest
of the world (and reasons why Squeak not popular for devs in a
masses). But maybe we should stop and think, what we could fix by
ourselves to change this situation.
Otherwise, with arguments like yours, this disscussion is pointless.



--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Igor Stasenko wrote: Not at all. It means literally:
- It would be great to have Etoys as a package on top of Squeak (as Ian
says). (That's exactly what I tried to do when I was the Morphic Team
leader 4 or 5 years ago, btw.) However, saying that and not being able
to get it done is useless.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

2009/7/2 Juan Vuletich <[hidden email]>:
Okay. So lets focus on things which can be done then.

Because after reading this topic, and especially last messages, i got
an impression that i can answer simply to the main question of Squeak:

Q: What is Squeak?
A: Anything you like it to be.
(next should be written with very small letters)
But only after you spend half of your life making it.


Sorry for sarcasm.

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

On 01.07.2009, at 19:33, Ramon Leon wrote:

Whoever cares about Morphic.

As I explained before, Etoys development happened outside of  
squeak.org since 3.9. And even if we start fixing it now it will take  
quite some time before it is fully usable again.

Besides, it's not like all other subsystems have active maintainers,  
so there's no point in singling out Etoys.

>> If there's no-one, then wouldn't it be better to cut it out and
>> integrate later as a separate module/package (whatever you think is
>> fits for it) by people who cares?
>> When i come to shop to buy a bread & taking it to the cash desk, is
>> there anyone yelling at me, that i'm also need to pay for a bicycle,
>> because bread is not selling as a separate product?

That's a silly analogy. If I could buy a Squeak version which had  
Etoys as an optional add-on that still works, I would take that. Alas  
the way Etoys was written goes against what you would call modular  
design and hence it is not a simple add-on. It's interwoven with  
Morphic to a degree the two are hard to separate.

>> Please understand me, i have nothing against eToys. But i treat eToys
>> as an application on Squeak platform, not as a core part of it. And i
>> thinking that it should play under a common rules as any other
>> applications do: keep it as separate package.
>
> Ditto, why is so hard for some to see that eToys isn't Squeak, it's  
> an app build on Squeak?

Because it's not. Wish it was, but it isn't. I guess you never  
actually understood the code. Nobody can even draw a clear line  
between what is Etoys and what is not. And no, the system categories  
mentioning "Etoys" are not it by far.

>  If eToys was a loadable/unloadable application, no one would have  
> any problem with it whatsoever.

You're welcome to help make it so. It's just not as easy as ripping it  
out.

I think the discussion so far showed once more that there is wide  
agreement for Etoys having a major place in the squeak.org community.  
But the details of how it should be maintained are not well understood.

Unlike more recent Squeak additions that are nicely modular, Etoys was  
not developed as an "application" running "on top of" Squeak. It  
rather evolved in close symbiosis with the rest of the system, in  
particular the Morphic UI framework. I don't think we have enough  
resources to separate the two while keeping them alive. Maybe the best  
use of development resources would be to consider the current Morphic
+Etoys a unit and work on an alternative, leaner UI framework? So the  
two would not step on each other's feet?

Ideas (and even more actual help) welcome.

- Bert -

On 01.07.2009, at 23:16, Ian Trudel wrote:

> When it's time to wrap up Squeak into a product and deploy it, it  
> turns out bitter.

This is sad to hear. Why is that? You don't really explain what's the  
problem in the rest of your post but just lay all the blame on Etoys.

Deploying apps in Squeak has been made considerably easier in the last  
couple of years - take a look at the Sophie or Seaside downloads for  
example which are good examples of how to bundle VMs for your target  
system with an image and support files in one directory structure. Or  
this brand new Etoys-To-Go beta ;)

http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Etoys+To+Go

- Bert -

At Wed, 1 Jul 2009 19:30:49 -0400,
Ian Trudel wrote:
>
> Great. That would be really interesting to learn more about that.
> Especially in term of deployment, localization, maintenance and
> support in general. Are those open systems or close products?

  What I had in mind were (notice that I said he worked on or his
contribution is used in):

  - (A pirate game for a cable company?)
  - Plopp
  - Sophie
  - Qwaq Forums
  - (A company that used Squeak broswer plugin for something)
  - ...

As an open system, well, Etoys would count^^;

> I understand that. Could we consider Squeak to have its own roadmap?

  Sure.

  While there are questions like whether it can be done in a
reasonable way or not and say, and whether it can be compatible with
the previous Etoys systems, the vision of having "an authoring system
for children of all ages and maintain it" is a worthy one, and quite a
few seem to be supporting the idea.  And it wouldn't really harm
"grown ups" view of the system.

> >  - I could say that Squeak left the visionary people when more people
> >    in the community get only interested in "grown up" parts and
> >    themselves.
>
> Possibly. They were however at the head of the project. Doesn't it
> tell you something?

  Many things, but possibly we don't agree^^;

-- Yoshiki

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:

>   What I had in mind were (notice that I said he worked on or his
> contribution is used in):
>
>   - (A pirate game for a cable company?)

Yes, it really was for a cable (TV) company. An instructive example of
where tax money can vanish^h^h^h^h^h^h go...


>   - Plopp

That's where Bert came up with the .app (aka one-click) deployment
structure.

>   - Sophie

Sophie is OpenSource (new BSD) (Impara worked on it as part of a funded
project).

Michael

On 7/2/09 2:32 PM, "Bert Freudenberg" <[hidden email]> wrote:

But the fact was several of us made images without Etoys, and exist ways to
load again Etoys .

It's not easy and I agree having hard time drawing a line between Morphic
and Etoys.

If you answer with the last Etoys image and sources for developers I could
try to see how load the "Etoys part" into SqueakLightII

Edgar

2009/7/2 Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]>:
> I have no idea where the myth comes from that the look of Squeak's Smalltalk
> development tools has anything whatsoever to do with Etoys, but anyhow it
> would be a good idea to stop spreading it.
>
> "Usability and look-and-feel" is what this thread is about so constructive
> ideas (or even better code and designs) are welcome, but blaming it on Etoys
> is just cheap.
>
> - Bert -

Hello Bert,

I can buy your statement as Etoys is not to be blamed. Squeak has
taken a direction for a long time and perhaps Etoys was caught in the
middle. Does it really matter who's or what's fault is? As long as we
can move forward. But it shouldn't surprise you that some people would
prefer Etoys as a package; it's overly interwoven with Morphic by your
own admission.

Regardless. Usability and look-and-feel should probably be a higher
priority than Etoys, or not Etoys. What do you guys think?

> Maybe the best use of development resources would be to
> consider the current Morphic+Etoys a unit and work on an alternative, leaner
> UI framework? So the two would not step on each other's feet?
>
> Ideas (and even more actual help) welcome.

I like the idea but it sounds hard work on a stake. Isn't Morphic an
alternative to MVC? Isn't Tweak an alternative to Morphic? I was
interested in the concept behind Tweak but it feels so stiff?! And it
wasn't on point when it comes to responsiveness. I should give another
round anyway. Something both flexible (Morphic) and structured (MVC)
comes to my mind...

2009/7/2 Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]>:
> On 01.07.2009, at 23:16, Ian Trudel wrote:
>> When it's time to wrap up Squeak into a product and deploy it, it turns
>> out bitter.
>
> This is sad to hear. Why is that? You don't really explain what's the
> problem in the rest of your post but just lay all the blame on Etoys.

My apologies if you thought that I was blaming Etoys for problems
related to deployment. It's not what I meant anyway.

It's difficult for me to thoroughly explain the problems related to
the requirements imposed to me because: 1) we're still investigating,
asserting each requirement against Squeak. 2) It's done in part time.
3) there might be some confidentiality issues to resolve beforehand.

The reason why I decided to speak up now rather once we're all set and
ready is really because I feel the community is ready to listen and
discuss. I'm not trying to rush anything here...

Hopefully, I will share more information in a reasonable time frame.

> Deploying apps in Squeak has been made considerably easier in the last
> couple of years - take a look at the Sophie or Seaside downloads for example
> which are good examples of how to bundle VMs for your target system with an
> image and support files in one directory structure. Or this brand new
> Etoys-To-Go beta ;)
>
> http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Etoys+To+Go

Yes, I have seen most of them. It's quite interesting indeed.
I've even tried Etoy's gettext support. :P


2009/7/2 Yoshiki Ohshima <[hidden email]>:
I agree with that. Coexisting is definitively possible. Wouldn't a
grown up view would actually empower and benefit to "an authoring
system for children of all ages and maintain it"? Because the other
way around is just not the same.

>> Possibly. They were however at the head of the project. Doesn't it
>> tell you something?
>
>  Many things, but possibly we don't agree^^;

he he he. =)

> -- Yoshiki

All the best, Bert and Yoshiki. :)

Ian.

--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

> Regardless. Usability and look-and-feel should probably be a higher
> priority than Etoys, or not Etoys. What do you guys think?
>  
Those who regard look and feel as a high priority have done a lot of
work on it.

Please load polymorph

Keith

2009/7/2 Keith Hodges <[hidden email]>:
Obviously! then it just resolves the look-and-feel. And load Polymorph
definitely does not sound "loaded by default". One of the element
mentioned in the recent thread related to Usability&Co, it's being
approachable to newcomers.

How about usability now? =)

Ian.
--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

At Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:55:58 -0300,
Edgar J. De Cleene wrote:
>
> But the fact was several of us made images without Etoys, and exist ways to
> load again Etoys .

  Ah, right.  I haven't tried them, but I hardly imagine that it is
compatible (i.e., a project file created in the Etoys image loads to
it).

> It's not easy and I agree having hard time drawing a line between Morphic
> and Etoys.
>
> If you answer with the last Etoys image and sources for developers I could
> try to see how load the "Etoys part" into SqueakLightII

  The image is basically this one below with some updates:

http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/etoys-dev-4.0.zip

-- Yoshiki