Posted by Ramon Leon-5 on Jun 29, 2009; 6:54pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Usability-and-look-and-feel-was-Re-squeak-dev-The-future-of-Squeak-Pharo-was-Re-Pharo-project-ANN-Ph-tp81502p81503.html


> There are many superficial people in this crazy world. They don't get
> pass the current look-and-feel. It is unfortunate enough because they
> cannot see the true beauty behind Smalltalk.

It is not superficial to look at Squeak and run away screaming as soon
as you see it, in fact it's the exact reaction of the vast majority of
developers who open up an image for the first time and it's quite a
normal reaction.  It looks and feels like an ugly toy rather than a
serious development environment and it's Squeak's fault, not the
developers.

If it looks like a toy, then it shouldn't pretend to be otherwise.  If
it's going to claim itself a serious platform that real work can be done
on, then it needs to look and behave that way.  The Pharo guys
understand this, but I don't think Squeak ever will.

Progress and backwards compatibility are fundamentally opposing forces,
those insisting on backwards compatibility are the ones preventing
progress.  Those insisting on the monolithic image of unmaintained
packages are preventing progress.  The Pharo guys had the right idea,
break from the community containing those people so those things can be
dropped and some progress can actually made instead of the yearly
endless "future of Squeak" posts that always seem lead to doing nothing.

My money's Goran's first scenario: Pharo continuing to steal developer
mind share and Squeak slowly stagnating and dying off.

Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com