Smalltalk - Re: Mea Culpa

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Re: Mea Culpa

Posted by hernanmd on Jan 22, 2015; 2:42am
URL: https://forum.world.st/Mea-Culpa-tp4800840p4800870.html

Hello Richard,

2015-01-21 17:12 GMT-03:00 horrido <[hidden email]>:

Okay, so far, I've made two mistakes. First was my lack of sensitivity to
cultural differences around the world. Now that I know better, I shall do
better.

You better take a lot of care writing about politics, sports, or whatever that could be considered Off-Topic. Some people is always looking for excuses to kick out offenders. And some others are monitoring with eagle eyes any out-of-order comment you can possibly write. Rules of the game.

Second was my failure to distinguish between different subgroups within the
Pharo forum.

Welcome to Smalltalk :)

The reason I chose Pharo forum to discuss my campaign was the
fact that it is the most active Smalltalk forum there is. People who are

interested in Smalltalk join the most active forum generally, and this
includes not only Pharoers, but people from ESUG, Squeak, Cincom, Amber,
Redline, etc.

Yes, this is parasitic behavior and well-known for biologists. Unfortunately I haven't seen many smalltalkers interested in on-line social behavior, probably because in such small community the most valuable asset is The Code, followed by The Documentation. Which of course, are excuses to get The Money.

So, for example, when I appealed for contributors to the Redline project, I
should've distinguished the target audience as those groups other than
Pharoers. This was my failure and I own up to it.

It is unfortunate that I must use the Pharo forum for this purpose. The
Smalltalk community is so terribly fragmented that there is no universal
Smalltalk forum to address, at least, none that is actually *inhabited*.
Without the ability to address the largest number of Smalltalkers, the SRP
cannot make any progress. I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt.

Then maybe you should start your own Smalltalk mailing-list?

For spanish language we have ClubSmalltalk. Is a cross-smalltalk mailing list where people may write in other languages, but has become really low volume in the last years. And Smalltalk was (is?) very popular in Argentina, so you can get a dimension of how terribly small the community is.

If anyone can offer a practical alternative, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise,
the SRP has only two choices:

1) Continue what it is doing on the Pharo forum, and be mindful of which
group(s) I am addressing.

2) Fold up the campaign and leave the destiny of Smalltalk to the Fates.
Without the ability to reach out to Smalltalkers everywhere, I am hopelessly
disadvantaged.

I am not that convinced Smalltalk should be popular. Surely any smalltalker could find easily (more) job offers, that would be the only determinant factor because we need desperately more Smalltalk positions. But popularity has many drawbacks.... some smalltalkers are afraid to competition, and we all read the StackOverflow 'popular' questions...

So, my alternative is: Instead of broadcasting Smalltalk by traditional internet advertising, go and get them. I suspect you won't get much from us, we are some kind of Loyal Customers. But there are tons of unexperienced developers lacking of fear to change, which are reading Quora, StackExchange, Wikipedia, etc. And unexperienced developers are the next business decision makers.

No Smalltalk mention there. There you have it, the Library of Alexandria of our time, and people do not read about us.

Cheers,

Hernán

Regards,
Richard

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