October 2012 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by Igor Stasenko

On 16 October 2012 21:39, blake <dsblakewatson(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> And let me remind you , that personal computers appeared long before 1995. > > I got my Apple ][+ in 1979. But I was a geek, and both my parents were > geeks. (Before that, my dad and I worked on our own ADVENT, using the > Fortran code from Colossal Cave.) > > Geeks will doubtless still continue to have and want desktops. > >> IMO, the fundamental difference between personal computer apps, that >> they rely on capabilities of your personal computer. While web-apps, >> obviously not. > > Screen-size is a personal computer capability. Input devices are. > Other output devices (e.g., sounds or vibrations) are. Flash is. > Anything executing locally requires understanding of capabilities. > Bandwidth, although not usually bottlenecked at the device point these > days, is still a capability. > > As for your list of "never"s--well, never say never. > i am pretty confident, as long as speed of light remains finite :) > The Internet in general is an unsafe mess--and yet here we are. > let the carrier be with you! (an old modem era joke ;) > ===Blake=== > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by dimitris chloupis

Well I cannot argue that I can talk for the entire coding field. The field I am working on are 3d graphics, 2d graphics and audio / music. So when I posted my opinion it was largely based on my personal needs and expectations. I should have said "I don't believe that web is my future". 3d graphics wise, desktop not only is light years ahead any web technology out there but it also moves in warp speed. The progress in opengl , directX and graphic cards is just phenomenal. With the latest CUDA technology a graphic card can be even 100 times faster than a CPU , and this accelaration is no longer specialized on graphics alone , making this acceleration ideal for many different kinds of computation (but not all). The best library, web wise,Â so far is webgl which is a port of opengl es 2 to the web and very reliant on it. Webgl support is still messy across browser and the speed is still a joke even compared to some of the slowest modern desktops (even 10 years old desktops). So 3d department is pretty much non existent web wise. If you take a look to many so called "3d browser games" you will find out that they are not browser games at all and they are very much reliant onÂ desktop they run on like QuakeLive.Â iPhone wise, it uses also opengl es 2 which is a cut down version of opengl 4 so again its desktop technology repackaged and re-marketed under a different name.Â Audio synthesis and music wise, there is some midi support for JS and some audio synthesis engines, but nothing nowhere close to what desktop has to offer in terms of products and libraries. Again iPhone seems to have quite a lot of music apps , but once again most of them are just small ports of desktop apps and they are extremely limited. Of course iPhone has a very small relation to web development per se since its pretty much close related to the same tools and libraries as the macos desktop. Of course the problem is that two fields I am touching here graphics and music are very dependent on processing power and execution speed , not ideal for either mobile development or web development. But still both are extremely popular fields, that guarantee the success of desktop for eons to come. I do understand however that other fields of coding are much easier to bring to the web and maybe to a degree this transition already has happened. But I cant feel qualified to talk about coding fields that I am not familiar with. Saying that there is a boom in game market concerning the mobile market with iOS and Android, again those are not web fields and still very reliant to desktop technology. The issues with those fields is that they boom because of the low cost of the devices and the games themselves but the graphic quality they offer is much lower to such extend that I dont think they pose any threat to pc and console game market. ________________________________ From: Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda(a)gmail.com> To: Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr Sent: Tuesday, 16 October 2012, 21:44 Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly don't believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. > I wouldn't put your money on the desktop. Â While reports of the desktop's demise are premature,Â it's no longer growing. Â The desktop is alive and well but in a niche. Â Â The futureÂ (actually the present)Â is on the smart phone, or embedded in almost anything. Â We may spend or time in front of a desktop but the world is watching, touching, feeling, listening and speaking to their phone. The phone however is a mobile device and hence it needs the internet and the web is the internet's gui, at least its non-proprietary gui (iTunes, appStore et al being the proprietary guis). Â The iPhone shows that framework is more important than programming language, and that js isn't necessarily important for mobile, but it is considered neutral compared to e.g. flash. Â > >The very fact that the most popular web app, by far nowdays is facebook and the very fact that if you took facebook out today people would lose nothing in practicality tells so much about what web is all about. Web is not all bad of course, its still without any doubt the library of Alexandria but most of it , its just pointless way of killing your free time. > > > >The trend is to push web to the desktop and I think that has been proven a very bad idea. Web technology is based on some very bad design decisions and it makes me laugh when technologies like node.js take the web world by storm when desktop has similar technologies for far too long. > > > >If you looks carefully you will also see that Desktop is more and more pushing to the web, so for me it looks like web development is not going to have much of a chance. Many existing programming languages are already compiling to js, but even in that case why even bother ? IT makes sense for mobile devices , but what will happen if for example pharo and squeak start making ports for those mobile devices . Why bother with JS at all ? > > > >I try to make a visual coding project and I did consider amber and some js libraries and to my surprise the only dynamic graphic library I found of some serious usefulness was processing.js and its just too slow for what I want to achieve. And if you think about all those so called web technologies are really sandboxed , limited and slow desktop technologies. > > > >I still find the fact that a browser can run anywhere extremely tempting but in the end I dont think its really worth it. And yes I disagree with the video of trying to say that web is like electricity. When electricity came out there was nothing like it, with the web its very diffirent because not only desktop can do many of the things that web can , all web technologies are practically desktop technologies. Also even if you take a look at how much Desktop has progressed 10 years and how much the web , even though the web is super hyped those past 10 years you will get a very clear picture of how things really are. > > > >I dont think squeak or pharo should turn their backs to the web technologies , js and all others (and I love the fact that projects like amber do exist) but I would prefer if more effort is spent on making sure that they work on all platforms equally good. > > >From where I am standing there is no competitiveness in usefulness when it comes to JS and web technology there is just competitiveness in popularity and hype. And I would rather prefer if pharo and squeak dont play that game and continue being actually useful , innovative , easy to use , technologies. Web is certainly tempting but in the end its an empty promise.Â Â > > > > >________________________________ > From: "sebastian(a)flowingconcept.com" <sebastian(a)flowingconcept.com> >To: Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr >Sent: Monday, 15 October 2012, 23:02 >Subject: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere > > >Hi guys, > >all comparisons are unfair I know but this is only to make you guy aware of this (please ignore if you're already). > >Here is the thing: > >The Jeff Bezos' Electricity Metaphor: >http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovation.html > > >Makes (probably) any smalltalker remember the Alan Kay's talk about having in the internet an IP for every object and spectacular computer science ideas like that. > >The js everywhere trend makes a lot of sense. Once it achieves critical mass it might tempt intel and friends to do some hardware accelerator for js VM's. Who knows. We have a long way to go but, in the meantime, all js staked frameworks make a lot of sense and WILL get traction because of that. Example: > >http://www.wakanda.org/ > >A talk here: >https://vimeo.com/31603156 > >So.. the unfair question here would be: > >What we'll have to match that competitiveness? > >sebastian > >o/ > >PS: Pharo + WebSockets + Amber sounds in that line doesn't? > > > > -- best, Eliot

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by blake

> And let me remind you , that personal computers appeared long before 1995. I got my Apple ][+ in 1979. But I was a geek, and both my parents were geeks. (Before that, my dad and I worked on our own ADVENT, using the Fortran code from Colossal Cave.) Geeks will doubtless still continue to have and want desktops. > IMO, the fundamental difference between personal computer apps, that > they rely on capabilities of your personal computer. While web-apps, > obviously not. Screen-size is a personal computer capability. Input devices are. Other output devices (e.g., sounds or vibrations) are. Flash is. Anything executing locally requires understanding of capabilities. Bandwidth, although not usually bottlenecked at the device point these days, is still a capability. As for your list of "never"s--well, never say never. The Internet in general is an unsafe mess--and yet here we are. ===Blake===

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by Igor Stasenko

On 16 October 2012 20:44, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> > wrote: >> >> Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly >> don't believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. > > > I wouldn't put your money on the desktop. While reports of the desktop's > demise are premature, it's no longer growing. The desktop is alive and well > but in a niche. The future (actually the present) is on the smart phone, > or embedded in almost anything. We may spend or time in front of a desktop > but the world is watching, touching, feeling, listening and speaking to > their phone. To me those gadgets is just highly portable personal computers. The big paradigm shift, is that they are always connected to network, while for desktop systems this was ultimately not necessary and optional. > > The phone however is a mobile device and hence it needs the internet and the > web is the internet's gui, at least its non-proprietary gui (iTunes, > appStore et al being the proprietary guis). The iPhone shows that framework > is more important than programming language, and that js isn't necessarily > important for mobile, but it is considered neutral compared to e.g. flash. > Yes, you cannot speak or watch anything on the phone without being connected, because all content is delivered via network, and without connection (GPS/4G/WIFI) those gadgets is just useless pieces of glass and plastic. But regarding your comment about framework, i am not so sure. Maybe i am blind, but Apple frameworks don't impress me to the point that i could tell that it is far superior to anything existing. And take a look at xcode.. it just don't delivers. In fact, this is the worst integrated development environment i ever used before. Especially considering how much human/engineering resources Apple has. IMO, the reason why developers rush for iphone market is much much more simpler: MONEY.. Everyone thinks that they can sell their content to the millions and get rich fast (dreams, dreams).. Take the popularity of Objective-C language, for example: it was existed long before iphone(s).. and where it was? It skyrocketed in popularity just after i<cool expensive stuff> appeared.. So, saying that this is because "it so cool has uber frameworks" is sweet lies. During rush, people paying little attention to such insignificant detail(s) like language or framework. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by Eliot Miranda

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk>wrote: > Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly > don't believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. > I wouldn't put your money on the desktop. While reports of the desktop's demise are premature, it's no longer growing. The desktop is alive and well but in a niche. The future (actually the present) is on the smart phone, or embedded in almost anything. We may spend or time in front of a desktop but the world is watching, touching, feeling, listening and speaking to their phone. The phone however is a mobile device and hence it needs the internet and the web is the internet's gui, at least its non-proprietary gui (iTunes, appStore et al being the proprietary guis). The iPhone shows that framework is more important than programming language, and that js isn't necessarily important for mobile, but it is considered neutral compared to e.g. flash. > > The very fact that the most popular web app, by far nowdays is facebook > and the very fact that if you took facebook out today people would lose > nothing in practicality tells so much about what web is all about. Web is > not all bad of course, its still without any doubt the library of > Alexandria but most of it , its just pointless way of killing your free > time. > > The trend is to push web to the desktop and I think that has been proven a > very bad idea. Web technology is based on some very bad design decisions > and it makes me laugh when technologies like node.js take the web world by > storm when desktop has similar technologies for far too long. > > If you looks carefully you will also see that Desktop is more and more > pushing to the web, so for me it looks like web development is not going to > have much of a chance. Many existing programming languages are already > compiling to js, but even in that case why even bother ? IT makes sense for > mobile devices , but what will happen if for example pharo and squeak start > making ports for those mobile devices . Why bother with JS at all ? > > I try to make a visual coding project and I did consider amber and some js > libraries and to my surprise the only dynamic graphic library I found of > some serious usefulness was processing.js and its just too slow for what I > want to achieve. And if you think about all those so called web > technologies are really sandboxed , limited and slow desktop technologies. > > I still find the fact that a browser can run anywhere extremely tempting > but in the end I dont think its really worth it. And yes I disagree with > the video of trying to say that web is like electricity. When electricity > came out there was nothing like it, with the web its very diffirent because > not only desktop can do many of the things that web can , all web > technologies are practically desktop technologies. Also even if you take a > look at how much Desktop has progressed 10 years and how much the web , > even though the web is super hyped those past 10 years you will get a very > clear picture of how things really are. > > I dont think squeak or pharo should turn their backs to the web > technologies , js and all others (and I love the fact that projects like > amber do exist) but I would prefer if more effort is spent on making sure > that they work on all platforms equally good. > > From where I am standing there is no competitiveness in usefulness when it > comes to JS and web technology there is just competitiveness in popularity > and hype. And I would rather prefer if pharo and squeak dont play that game > and continue being actually useful , innovative , easy to use , > technologies. Web is certainly tempting but in the end its an empty > promise. > > ------------------------------ > *From:* "sebastian(a)flowingconcept.com" <sebastian(a)flowingconcept.com> > *To:* Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr > *Sent:* Monday, 15 October 2012, 23:02 > *Subject:* [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js > everywhere > > Hi guys, > > all comparisons are unfair I know but this is only to make you guy aware > of this (please ignore if you're already). > > Here is the thing: > > The Jeff Bezos' Electricity Metaphor: > http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovation.html > > Makes (probably) any smalltalker remember the Alan Kay's talk about having > in the internet an IP for every object and spectacular computer science > ideas like that. > > The js everywhere trend makes a lot of sense. Once it achieves critical > mass it might tempt intel and friends to do some hardware accelerator for > js VM's. Who knows. We have a long way to go but, in the meantime, all js > staked frameworks make a lot of sense and WILL get traction because of > that. Example: > > http://www.wakanda.org/ > > A talk here: > https://vimeo.com/31603156 > > So.. the unfair question here would be: > > What we'll have to match that competitiveness? > > sebastian > > o/ > > PS: Pharo + WebSockets + Amber sounds in that line doesn't? > > > > -- best, Eliot

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by Igor Stasenko

On 16 October 2012 20:10, blake <dsblakewatson(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis > <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >> Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly don't >> believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. > > Desktops are a fluke. "Nobody" wanted one before 1995, and "nobody" > will want one after 2015. Or maybe now. :) > i do not think 'desktop' is a right term. for me, personal computing (and personal computers) is better definition. And let me remind you , that personal computers appeared long before 1995. IMO, the fundamental difference between personal computer apps, that they rely on capabilities of your personal computer. While web-apps, obviously not. Web-apps mainly relocating the computation onto another computer, effectively making your personal one to serve as a remote (even if media-rich) terminal, connected to mainframe. Perhaps web was the catalyst for emergence of cloud-computing. But conceptually, cloud computing is completely orthogonal to 'web', it is just turning computing power into easily accessible commodity. Web, of course, can enjoy exploiting this new approach, as well as any others too. And of course, for certain applications , web will be never completely acceptable, due to: - network latency - security - reliability - etc > Not to say your points about development are wrong. But as Alan Kay > has pointed out, we are compulsive wheel re-inventers. > > ===Blake=== > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] image format with shebang

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:44, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)stfx.eu> wrote: > On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:05, David T. Lewis <lewis(a)mail.msen.com> wrote: > >> The parameters are not being passed to your VM in the way you expect. Here is >> what the man page for bash says: >> >> If the program is a file beginning with #!, the remainder of the first >> line specifies an interpreter for the program. The shell executes the >> specified interpreter on operating systems that do not handle this exe- >> cutable format themselves. The arguments to the interpreter consist of >> a single optional argument following the interpreter name on the first >> line of the program, followed by the name of the program, followed by >> the command arguments, if any. >> >> I think there is some trick you can use to pass parameters, but I can't >> recall the details. Maybe google can help. > > Thanks for answering, I will do some more reading then ;-) David, Your tip was the right one: I made my own wrapper script $ cat pharo #!/bin/sh script_home=$(dirname $0) script_home=$(cd $script_home && pwd) vm=$script_home/CogVM options="-vm-display-null -vm-sound-null -plugins $script_home" $vm $options $* And now, with just one executable as argument in the header $ cat header.bin #!/home/ubuntu/smalltalk/bin/pharo It all works $ ./magic.image eval 'DateAndTime now julianDayNumber' 2456217 $ ./magic.image eval '42 factorial' 1405006117752879898543142606244511569936384000000000 So, the script that is running must do something special with its own arguments. Thanks again, Sven -- Sven Van Caekenberghe http://stfx.eu Smalltalk is the Red Pill

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by blake

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly don't > believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. Desktops are a fluke. "Nobody" wanted one before 1995, and "nobody" will want one after 2015. Or maybe now. :) Not to say your points about development are wrong. But as Alan Kay has pointed out, we are compulsive wheel re-inventers. ===Blake===

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere

by sebastian＠flowingconcept.com

thank you all for the many interesting opinions and thoughtful arguments. I'll have this in mind for my talk too sebastian o/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "StÃ©phane Ducasse" <stephane.ducasse(a)inria.fr> To: Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr, "dimitris chloupis" <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 10:38:06 AM Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js everywhere On Oct 16, 2012, at 12:10 PM, dimitris chloupis wrote: > My only concern is if we try to make smalltalk fit the style of the web, wont that mean that we compromise the quality of smalltalk libraries ? We are not :) Now as usual there is a man power problem. If you pays us 50 engineers during 2 years you will have a lot more than what we have in pharo :) > If we try to make desktop comply with web standards wont that lower the bar ? Would not be much better if we just port well proven desktop technologies to the web as it is already hapenning ( see WebGL) ?

Oct. 16, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] image format with shebang

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

On 16 Oct 2012, at 18:05, David T. Lewis <lewis(a)mail.msen.com> wrote: > The parameters are not being passed to your VM in the way you expect. Here is > what the man page for bash says: > > If the program is a file beginning with #!, the remainder of the first > line specifies an interpreter for the program. The shell executes the > specified interpreter on operating systems that do not handle this exe- > cutable format themselves. The arguments to the interpreter consist of > a single optional argument following the interpreter name on the first > line of the program, followed by the name of the program, followed by > the command arguments, if any. > > I think there is some trick you can use to pass parameters, but I can't > recall the details. Maybe google can help. Thanks for answering, I will do some more reading then ;-)

Oct. 16, 2012