Excerpts from kilon alios's message of 2015-01-22 08:13:57 +0100:
> Popularity indeed comes with a high price. Guido the creator of python he
> has said in one of his presentation that there many people who want to add
> their libraries to python distribution but they should not want to do that,
> because once a library is added it become very difficult to change since so
> many people depend on it to keep backward compatibility. He claimed that
> even simple bug fixes have to go through lengthy review process. This can
> be expanded to the entirety of the IDE and the language.
>
> This the most important reason why pharo has been moving forward so fast
> and why popular languages move at glacial speed.
> I dont want to lose that so yes I dont want for pharo to become popular.

squeak already hast that 'problem' i believe and pharo is actively working to
counteract it by removing less important things. so i doubt pharo will suffer
from the pressure to fill it up with new packages any time soon.

in this case it may be a win for all because those who want backwards
compatibility can choose squeak, and those who want fast paced action may use
pharo.

also craig with context is working on minimizing the images which i believe
should help to move more and more things out of the core, allowing you to pull
them back in, making it possible to choose from various versions, based on your
compatibility needs.

ironically, i actually expect to want backwards compatibility in the future.
but backwards to now, not to a decade ago, so i hope pharo development will
eventually slow down somewhat.

in addition, the multiple smalltalk implementations also act as a stabilizing
factor, because people will want to write code that runs on all of them.
(seaside for example) so pharo can't go that far out of line and make itself
completely incompatible.

i am also not sure which is better. a large standard library makes for a more stable system.
having lots of important 3rd party libraries can lead to dependency issues...

greetings, martin.

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