Posted by Sean Malloy-2 on Apr 26, 2004; 11:06am
URL: https://forum.world.st/What-has-happened-to-Dolphin-Harbour-tp3370442p3370444.html

Chris,

> That's unfortunate, because this NG is *the* place for the dissemination
of
> information and the exchange of ideas.  It works very well too (IMO) --
much
> better than some "discussion forum" software on some website somewhere.
>
> I find the wretched "forums" are excruciating to use. There are a couple
that I
> have to read since they are the only source of information that I need,
but I
> use them *very* reluctantly.   If the Dolphin community ever moved to one
of
> those then it could say bye-bye to me (this may be considered an advantage
of
> such a move of course)

Its just a pity about all the rubbish that gets spammed into the NG. Go
Britney.

> I very much agree about the risks and problems of a community who's
"static"
> content is structured as a collection of independent websites.  But what
are
> the alternatives, and can you get the people (like me) who construct such
> things to "buy into" a centralised repository ?   I'm not saying you
can't, but
> there'd have to be a considerable advantage *to me* before I'd want to
cede
> control over my public software to another entity.  E.g. there's no way
that
> I'd use SorceForge for my stuff.
>
> It's definitely something to think more about, though.  If I had a more
> constructive proposal then I'd make it.

What about something like SqueakMap for Dolphin? Part of the problwm is
finding shared code. There is a lot of it in the newsgroup that is posted,
and there are .pac files floating around, but nowhere that can act as a
portal to all of it. Dolphin Harbour seems to be on the right track, but its
been quiet for some time.

Don't think of it as handing away control of your software. Keep your own
site for that. My gripe is with the location of examples. Its hard for a
newcomer to get into dolphin. I know the pool of developers who can publish
stuff for free isn't as great as in the Microsoft camp, but the only real
place to get answers to "HOw do I do" type questions, is the news group. I
haven't found anywhere which has a lot of snippets... Theres this great
addin for Visual Studio, I can't remember the name of it, but it connects
you to some web service, and people can publish and download snippets of
code.. Something like that could prove useful. Might be a nice undertaking
for me to try as a first real application......

> > The Smalltalk community in general is hard to traverse. There is so many
> > broken links, and so much dead content. Someone needs to clean it up.
>
> That's the nature of the Web.  If you'll forgive me getting gnomic, it
only
> lives because it can die.  If you want to lock stuff down, and keep it all
> packaged nicely, then you'll risk massive stagnation if people find that
> contributing to a centrally-managed resource is more effort (e.g. changes
to
> their working practises) than it's worth.

I'm generalising, but my point is there is that from the outside, there is
very little new stuff happening. I know this is not the case, but on the
surface, it seems that things have stopped.

I'm not really making a point... I guess I'm just starting to get a bit
frustrated because after having spent a good amount of time playing in
Dolphin over the last week, I had to go back to work and started up Visual
Studio and felt like quitting my job! =\