>
> Hey Richard,
>
> I believe the only alive cross-dialect space is the #smalltalk IRC channel in FreeNode. There's an average of 25~30 people online in that channel, which is not _too_ bad considering the size of our community. Still, compare that to, say, #lisp, with ~400 users and also being a cross-dialect channel.
>
> Smalltalkers feel quite strong about their particular dialect. I'm not criticizing this behavior, I'm just stating facts. I also have strong feelings for "my dialects" and I don't think this is necessarily bad.
>
> However, there are some "de-facto" meeting points for all Smalltalks, like http://world.st. Even though there is no mailing list that joins all of us together, this space does feature a homogenized list of all forums (http://forum.world.st/). Planet Smalltalk (http://planet.smalltalk.org/) is another great one for those of us who use RSS feeds.
>
> Indeed, it could take quite a while before a generic Smalltalk list was populated enough, but these two efforts show there might be an interest.
>
> Cheers,
> Bernat.
>
> 2015-01-22 9:11 GMT+01:00 Martin Bähr <[hidden email]>:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> --
>> eKita                   -   the online platform for your entire academic life
>> --
>> chief engineer                                                       eKita.co
>> pike programmer      pike.lysator.liu.se    caudium.net     societyserver.org
>> secretary                                                      beijinglug.org
>> mentor                                                           fossasia.org
>> foresight developer  foresightlinux.org                            realss.com
>> unix sysadmin
>> Martin Bähr          working in china        http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Bernat Romagosa.