Smalltalk - Re: A Sad Day

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Re: A Sad Day

Posted by codefrau on Aug 14, 2020; 7:42pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/A-Sad-Day-tp5120519p5120548.html

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 2:31 AM Marcel Taeumel <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Trygve,

I apologize for any misunderstandings here. I am not an English native speaker. It was not my intent do accuse you of lying.

However, there is a difference between a bug report and an unsubstantiated rant. I did read your entire post "A Sad Day" as the latter. Whose mistake that was, I cannot tell now. Neutral, objective bug reports would read different, I suppose.

It was neither a bug report nor an unsubstantiated rant. It was a criticism of the complexity of all current Smalltalks. The few examples of unexpected complexity in Squeak that Trygve chose to mention are not the actual issue. No need to feel personally attacked.

Having worked with a beautifully tiny system like Smalltalk-78, or even early versions of Squeak, the complexity in modern Squeak is staggering.

Smalltalk used to be a system that can be fully understood by a single person - truly a personal computing system. That is no longer the case.

All the functionality we added over the years comes at the price of complexity (not to mention speed). It makes the system hard to understand. It makes it hard to see the design principles. We have not found a way to eliminate, or at least hide, any of the complexity we introduced.

I don't think there is a "solution" for this within the current system. We have accepted the complexity, and now we have to live with it. And we have to accept that that alienates people who are looking for simplicity and elegance.

I am sad to see Trygve leave, but I do understand. He didn't even owe us an explanation. Thank you, Trygve!

All the best,

Vanessa