@Esteban: Thanks for your balanced answer. got it. But I get back to
the point of "silencing/ban" (which is not my suggestion).
@Eduardo: Right, sorry, this should have been more clearly (and I did
not want to be condescending towards newcomers). Soft skills and people
who create articles, tutorials, graphics, fansites, paper archives etc.
are most helpful and do earn merit, of course. But that is not what
R.K. Eng is doing (after reconsidering, newer articles are a bit less
devisive/wrong; his knowledge seems subpar to write docs/tutorials,
R.K.Eng is spreading half-truth and marketing slogans from the 1980ies,
and experienced devs, who might like Smalltalk, will be pushed off [I
have two actual experiences, I get to this, see below]).
I have carefully thought about, if I should really go publicly against
one person within the community, and to start this "tirade", including
the possibility that this causes an escalation, of course you
cannot/must not silence a person ("Streisand" effect, did not know the
term, but very fitting). But I decided that this kind of public
conflicts is what is needed (and will make the community look better,
not worse), _if_ a certain point is reached.
I stand by it, but have reconsidered some points:
* I do (did) not call for _immediate_ exclusion, but an "admonishment"
that if certain behaviour is not about to change fundamentally, the
community will have to act (by publicly separating this individual out).
* Take older articles down, which start flamewars against other
languages, or more precise: separate them from Smalltalk advocacy! If
he wants to flame JS (for its various birth defects), fine, but don't
connect that with pro-Smalltalk articles, for example.
* Community efforts shall follow follow some community consensus. Core
developers are no dictators, of course, but they are the ones knowing,
what the state of the project is, and where _their_ work will lead to.
Constantly ignoring this common guidance is detrimental to the
community. So either, learn Smalltalk core coding and challenge the
leadership, or do accept that there is some common agenda (and there
are lots of open tasks: writing tutorials, documentation, make old
scientific research available, linking and connecting showcases).
* Public opinion does matter. The fact I mentioned Google SEO was
indeed the starting point for me, to get into or start this flame war.
Here is my story:
Two of my clients (medium-sized enterprises) are classical C++/C#
Windows development companies. I advertised Pharo to them for an
_internal_ tool (their commerical products won't change to Smalltalk of
course, but for their own internal dev tasks, Pharo whould have been a
nice fit). When the managers got back to me, they had googled it, and
told me, this thing sounds very dubious ("unseriös"). I enquired, what
they had read, and they told me, this "spokesperson" (sic!!!) sounds
like a trolling script kid, and they can't employ something which is
developed (sic!!!) by such people. After some explanation, I managed to
convince them, that this person is just a lonely person, who showed up
out of nowhere, is not involved in the actual work, and just produces
himself on the internet. But too late, their impression on Smalltalk
was already formed by R.K.Engs "blogs" (in the meantime, they rank on
top in Google search result).
When I did some research of my own yesterday, and saw again, that R.K.
Engs dubious blog entries were listed on top, I decided to take action.
I like to answer to your balanced and thoughtful responses:
You may disagree about *how* he does such work, the actual content,
for sure, but that's a feedback better directed to mr. Eng himself.
R.K. Eng has made it clear in the past many many times in uncertain
wording, that he is not willing to follow community advice in these
matters, if his gut is telling him something different...
Hopefully I've expressed a balanced enough position that this doesn't
draw too many responses.
yes, you did. thank you.
I agree "Mr Smalltalk" is quite a presumptive title, but really
anyone following the mail lists soon gets an idea of who are the
community merit leaders.
Well, I disagree, based on the experience, I have written down above.
The internet is very much about who is in the center of the focus
(SEO/social media). Anybody new to Smalltalk will at first glance
identify our community with this "spokesperson" (as I have experienced
with two people, last year already btw)
Maybe it is a language thing, but "Mr. Smalltalk" is _extremely_
presumptive (in German, it means the embodiement of the denoted thing).
If a person is not doing very very thorough reading of ages old mail
list discussions or is researching, that this person in fact never
committed any code to the repos, then any newcomer will think, this
"Mr. Smalltalk" is at least a versed and informed Smalltalk developer
(which, given his newbie questions he is absolutly not).
You are right he hasn't committed any code, but I've not actually
seen him claim credit for any code in Pharo, so this point seems off.
true. but as I just wrote, that is what people presume, given his way
and manner of poducing himself. If he wrote honestly wrote "I am a
fanboy, supporter and advocate of Smalltalk...", great! But he claims
he worked many many hours without a dime, but worth many dollars, and
had "tremendous success" in creating a new Smalltalk wave.
Many people criticized his early articles (including me) for
attacking other languages rather than just promoting the positives
of Smalltalk
But I think that had an impact. I find his later articles more
balanced and I generally like the way his writing matured.
right. I stand corrected!
* ...is doing SEO to make Google show his own results before FOSS
community or sciences pages.
I think its equally likely that most in our community are too busy
coding to try getting articles ranked,
so its more lack of effort by most of us. Most of his articles
mention Pharo so people end up finding us anyway.
might be true (some criticism to the community agenda..? different
topic)
The thing is, the wrong informations are getting more and more in the
focus of the internet, pushing aside the community-driven Pharo sites
(or real scientific papers or well-done tutorials).
Any money he gets for his writing is not anything that concerns me
personally. Those articles are his own effort.
Sorry, misunderstanding! Of course, he may earn with his writing,
whatever he gets for it.
I was refering to the "up-coming" Smalltalk Coding Competition. Now,
yes, that money doesnt go into his own pockets (would be criminal
fraud), but the thing is, he controls this money. Who will be the
judges? Who will set parameters for the competition? Transparency? What
is the benefit that goes back into the community? Now, it is fine, that
he is pushing for things like that, but again, he is doing it without
synchronising this effort with what is needed by the community. And
before he again is pointing to Alan Kay giving some bucks, sure, it
would be very unpolite, if the Grand Jedi Master didnt contribute to a
fanboys project (my estimation, sorry).
* ...denies community leadership by merit (Pharo core developers do
know, what they have created and where they want to go in the
future,
I don't see him claiming leadership of our community or trying to
set our agenda.
He just didn't let community criticism of his writing slow him down.
All I observed is that several people bit him and he bit back -
fairly usual sort of poor communication on both sides (including me).
Well, as written above, the manner of his web appearance is implicitly
a claim of community leadership. Not an exclusive one of course, but he
wants to be percieved of one of the most important persons in the
community (he told so many times, explicitly). And given my experience,
read above, this had already a (negative) success with it.
And I think he is setting agenda: "Make Smalltalk great/mainstream
again" is the baseline, and that is something, only the core dev team
and the community as a whole can decide/make happen (I love Smalltalk,
but he promises wrong things, so if, just for example, C++/Qt devs or
_modern_ JS devs have a first look at Smalltalk with the expectation
they could already do the same thing as in their usual platforms, they
will be disappointed --> synchronize a marketing agenda with what this
great project currently is about, but he is not willing to cooperate
with the core dev team)
and which audience we should target, they don't need a clueless
person telling them to "get into TIOBE index", just for example)
Such opinions have no impact on me. Its just an opinion.
right ok.
* is claiming credit for the work others have done,
I don't see him claiming he did any work on Pharo codebase, so this
is off point.
see above. It is extremly implicit in his appearance, he fosters this
impression. (again, see my story)
fostering his own publicity (not the interests of Pharo/VisualWorks
etc).
Fostering his own publicity has no impact on me.
But actually I believe his heart is about fostering Pharo publicity,
even if some articles are not written the way I'd write them.
his heart burns for Smalltalk, true. But he is going rogue manytimes,
detrimental to the community: publicity _is_ power over a community.
Him swearing about a group of Pharo people is good ammunition to
bring to the mail list to support your point,
but I also see he was rather provoked. Overall I feel this extract
was better left in that small corner of the internet
rather than fan flames here.
:) Yeah... no! I think this is really a central point (so I put him in
the pillory here with intent). There is something called community/FOSS
ethics and structures.
He does not show _respect_ towards those people, who did the work, but
produces himself, and pushes for things, which the people who devoted
their work to this project, told him that it is counter-productive.
That is, in the long-run, a very dangerous situation.
PS: a side note on Javascript (with lower S). wether you love or
hate this quirky lovechild of Lisp and Self/Smalltalk, telling JS
developers they are stupid and that they should abandon powerful
Vue.js, for example, in favor of Amber Smalltalk [cudos to Amber
devs! great thing!]) is utterly stupid!
Agree. But banning everyone in the world for similar stupidity
would leave the internet awfully quiet.
Sure! Again: I am against silencing or banning anybody (and how could
you). But if this becomes unbearable, there needs to be a public
separation, so he does not drag the project down. People need to speak
up against such usurpation.
(which in the end are only a self-serving, ego-centric,
attention-greedy campaign to promote "Mr. Smalltalk" himself, a
total newbie, who claims credit for the work of others).
Your repeated "claims credit for the work of others" is quite
provocative and I haven't noticed this in his writings. Could you
provide a link?
See above, maybe it is a cultural thing, but as I told in my
experience, all of his appereance screams for being recogized as one of
the most important persons in the community (he is condescendingly
mocking marketing efforts of the last 40 years, claims that he is the
one who will "make smalltalk great again"...)
Yes I am provocative this time, not my normal style (and I admit, I was
tripped-out by his provocative blog title "Even people who understand
prototypal programming do not like it – an inconvienent truth"; that
is dripping off arrogance and ignorance... And sheds a bad ligt on
Smalltalk, with which he wants to be identified in the web)
Thank you!
