Re: [Pharo-users] Where do we go now ?

[Benoit St-Jean via Pharo-users]

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I concur with Sean's comments.  The problem is not using names : the problem is 
for new users.

A very quick look at what's in Pharo 7 shows the following names : Iceberg, 
Ombu, Calypso, Flashback, Nautilus, Renraku, Zodiac, Shift, Zinc, Hermes, 
Beacon, Cargo, Hermes, Opal, Shoreline, Epicea, Balloon, BlueInk, Commander, 
Fuel, Glamorous, Glamour, Gofer, Hiedra, Metacello, Moose, Ring, Rubric, Shout, 
Spec, etc...

How many Pharo *users* (not regular contributors!) know what those 
tools/frameworks/packages do ???  Make the test and tell us how many out of 30 
names you were able to identify correctly !

Unless we *clearly* publicize/describe what those names are, there's no way in 
a thousand years you could tell that BlueInk is not a package dealing with 
fonts (that was my first guess) !
Newcomers and (developers in general) expect a few things.  For instance, 
there's a gazillion UI frameworks out there and, most of the time, the name 
used for them is one of a famous painter.  VisualWorks had Chagall for 
instance. 

Or you'd expect some kind of hint from the name, e.g. XStreams, ScriptManager, 
RefactoringBrowser.

Or somethings as simple as Regex, the regex package from Bykov.  Or 
Announcements from the same guy.

Or names that reveals something from an etymology standpoint, e.g. TelePharo.

The simple fact that someone had to create a file to describe all those 
names/projects/framework on GitHub tells us a lot 
(https://github.com/AdamSadovsky/pharo-family/blob/master/catalog.txt) !

Unless we make it *EXTRA* clear and easily searchable and obvious what those 
names represent, it's just more confusion for the newcomer. 

Do you know what Celery is?  Probably not!  But if I ask you the same question 
for RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, MQSeries, StormMQ, SnakeMQ, IronMQ, ZeroMQ, MQTT and 
MSMQ, you probably figured out it's related to message queues, right?  Well, 
Celery is also related to message queues...  See?

There's nothing worse or more confusing than a bad/weird/unrelated name.  For 
example, the biggest company in Canada is called "Canadian Tire".  If you think 
you're gonna end up in a place specialized in tires, you're off for a big 
surprise !!!!

On the other end of the spectrum, you have something like iTunes.  Everybody 
knows iTunes.  And I guess, even if you didn't know, you can kinda easily guess 
it's related to music.  Your grandma might not exactly remember the name but 
she'll remember "Was it xTunes? zTunes? yTunes? It was something 'tunes', to 
music" !

And comparing other "names" with Pharo names makes no sense.  Nike, Hibernate, 
Jenkins, Docker and Oracle cannot be compared to Epicea, BlueInk, Flashback and 
Opal.  They just don't have the same visibility and public exposure.  That is 
hopefully a problem that will vanish as Pharo gets more and more attention and 
users and gets known more and more.  But in the meantime, those names merely 
help us differentiate implementations of solutions, for us the *regulars*.

Was it really that hard to replace the old workspace with Workspace2 or 
WhateverWorkspace ?  Or even better : get rid of the old Workspace and replace 
it with Playground while retaining the name "Workspace" ??? Did we really need 
to call it Playground and confuse every new Smalltalker out there that has seen 
the term "Workspace" for Dolphin, Smalltalk/X, VisualAge, VisualWorks, 
ObjectStudio, GNU Smalltalk, Amber, PharoJS, Smalltalk MT and every other 
Smalltalk around *EXCEPT* Pharo?

Why are we trying to complicate things when we could just make it 
soooooooooooooo simple?

Let's make it easy for **newcomers** to get their way around and know what the 
named tools/frameworks do.  Get rid of duplicate tools (do we need more than 
one kind of Inspector?  Do we need 2 compilers?  Do we need 8 Delay schedulers? 
 Do we need 2 system browsers? Do we need the duo Workspace/Playground) ?  Make 
these extra tools available somewhere it can be loaded from if a user *really* 
wants them in their image, but let's keep those OUT of the image!



----------------- 
Benoît St-Jean 
Yahoo! Messenger: bstjean 
Twitter: @BenLeChialeux 
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Blogue: endormitoire.wordpress.com 
"A standpoint is an intellectual horizon of radius zero".  (A. Einstein) 

    On Friday, April 20, 2018, 10:09:13 a.m. EDT, Sean P. DeNigris 
<s...@clipperadams.com> wrote:  
 
 Stephane Ducasse-3 wrote
> I like when developers are talking about names:
> They use a mac and not a computer, they were nike, lewis and not shoes
> and pants....
> So guys can we focus our energy on positive things.

IHMO this is certainly a positive subject because it highlights the
as-yet-to-be-resolved tension regarding understandability of the system
between having a unique name (good for googling, distinguishing between
versions) and a name that reveals what the project does/is for. What is the
plan to resolve this because it is a real problem?

Nike and Levis are designed to stand on their own in front of the consumer
market. Is this true of Nautilus, Calypso, or Epicea?

A more relevant example of products that are geared to be presented to
consumers as /part of/ another more-uniquely-named product come to mind: OS
release codenames:
- Mac - OS X 10.11: El Capitan and macOS 10.12: Sierra. Note that they
didn't just invent a random-seeming fabricated name and tell people to get
over it, they also provide a number which situates it in its domain.
- Interestingly Windows has moved back to boring release numbers and has
dropped the fantasy names

Possible solutions:
- Make project tags /the primary view for new users when searching the
system. There is a lot of talk about students and having to explain
confusing things to them. Would it not be more straightforward to look for a
"Class Browser" or "SCM" category?!
- If projects are designed just-for-pharo, maybe borrow another trick from
OS X - have a codename for development (like Fuji for Sierra) and then
change it to something more generic on release, like Browser3, although now
that we seem to be keeping tools in their own project repos, that might be
problematic

I summary, IMHO it is important to provide both:
- A clear, searchable, pragmatic way to navigate/understand the system
- As well as the unique, google-able, but usually undescriptive way we have
now



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Cheers,
Sean
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Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

  

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