Hi,
I have had a wonderful time in Smalltalks 2015 in Argentina, and for a
novice but involved practicioner in this event I don't see a lot of
balkanization between communities or internal fights. Most of us
attending the event could talk and enjoy each other without any concern
about using Gemtalk, Squeak, Cuis, Pharo etc. I share the Steph's claim
about not fighting different and worth visions inside the smalltalk
community, for me the real difference (or "fight" if you want) is with
other visions of what computing could be, most of the inherited from
unix paradigm and its development approaches (dead files, separed IDE,
balkanized tools, etc).
My reading is that different communities of Smalltalk doesn't talk that
much in EEUU as in Argentina/Chile or Europe. They're more atomized and
without the vitality that came from researchers and students in
universities (with maybe small exceptions), so this sense of
balkanization is bigger and there is a lot of pressure on being popular
(from TV shows of young people being popular in school to discovering
the next big thing in startups and technology). I think that to invent
the future we need to be released of the popularity narrative and to
have strong community ties to explore/build/communicate that future
together.
Cheers,
Offray
On 14/11/15 02:40, stepharo wrote:
Thanks this is nice effort.
Now some remarks:
- Do you think that great speakers like doru would be invited to
prime time conference to talk about a language that is from 1980?
- You talk about momentum and shared space. Do you think that it
is wise to talk about a Smalltalk whose forum has 5 posts in a year?
- We have to create the momentum and we should not look back (it
does not mean that we should not know our culture and history) and
invent for real the future.
Now do not get me wrong: I do pharo and the battle is not against
squeak, cuis or... it is against Javascript, Ruby, Lua, Python.
So decide were you put your energy. I chose for mine.
This is my last post on this thread. People not happy with my points
can be not happy but I'm right and I will not deviate one inch
:).
Stef
PS: working on a teaser about Pharo and its vision
PSPS:
my vision
ultimate live environment
great reflective system
well integrated with C
well integrated with OSes
wonderful IDE
Le 14/11/15 06:02, EuanM a écrit :
I've created Yet Another Smalltalk First
Steps tutorial.
This is intended as one of a series.
It is designed to be cross-platform across
Squeak 5
Pharo 4
Seaside 3.1
Cuis
Dolphin 6
If you have experience running any of these systems on Windows, Linux
or MacOS, please check to see if I have the instructions correct for
your chosen pairing of Smalltalk and OS platform.
(As you'll see when you look, I do not have detailed instructions for
aspects of MacOS).
The document is at:
http://smalltalkinsmallsteps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/get-smalltalk-up-and-running.html
(It's intended to move to a different blog after this review process).
I feel the need to do this as cross-Smalltalks tutorial because of
findings and 4 charts I've placed at:
http://smalltalkinsmallsteps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/mindshare-of-smalltalk-in-development.html
Essentially, Smalltalk mindshare and use is incredibly tiny, compared
to other languages in the same space. (We all know this, but seeing
it represented graphically has a more visceral effect, IMO)
Aggregating interest in all the Smalltalks still does not bring more
than a tiny proportion of the interest in, and use of, Ruby.
In turn, Ruby is (quite understandably) small in comparison to
JavaScript.
Comparing interest in any specific Smalltalk is, predictably, smaller
than the aggregate interest in Smalltalk.
Our community seems determined to split itself into smaller and
smaller sub-communities. I think we do ourselves a disservice this
way.
My initial contribution will be to try to provide some explicitly
pan-Smalltalk beginners' tutorials, like this one.
Cheers, and happy Smalltalking,
EuanM
