October 2014 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

Thanks alain. Here is my metaphor: I help myself and share my "soup of stones" with people that want to improve our soup of stones. At the end our soup may be great. Another way to present my metaphor is: "focus on what you need and change the system (and send us fixes/enhancements) on what you need. Because if you do not do it, then why a guy not needing it would need to spend time." ah to grow the market.... well Spur, 64 bits, better FFI, decent events, automated build for VM and many many other things are already in the pipeline and (none of them is about research :) you can trust me on that Stef On 3/10/14 21:24, Alain Rastoul wrote: > Le 03/10/2014 13:44, Esteban Lorenzano a Ã©crit : >> Hi, >> >> Iâm writing this because Iâm sad about what is happening in this list. >> Iâm seeing a lot of general negativity and non constructive ways to >> discuss things. >> Iâm also seeing more and more people using Pharo for their particular >> interests (which is of course a good thing) but less and less people >> who contribute back to Pharo. >> Finally, Iâm seeing more frequently an attitude of âcustomerâ, more >> than the conviction than this, Pharo, is also yoursâ¦ >> >> Please people, we (the pharo âcoreâ team) cannot do everything. We do >> not have the manpower or the resources to hire manpower. We would >> like, but we just do not have the resources (is already a blessing >> that we can work on this, for now: INRIA is paying, but what it pays >> is *research*, not âpharo the languageâ, so this is a collateral >> advantageâ¦.) >> >> So, having an OPEN SOURCE project, with limited resources means that >> there is a lot of things that depend on the community. >> It depends on the community not just to fix, but to enlarge the >> ecosystem in general too. >> >> So, I refuse to believe that we cannot be a cool and helpful community. >> I refuse to believe that general negativity and bad humor can >> overcome the joy of participating in this collective effort. >> >> So, here some recommendations for enhance the way we participate: >> >> - Be positive. Just âthis is a s**tâ does not help. Even if it is. >> - Be propositional. Just âthis is a s**tâ, and not telling what you >> want/prefer does not help. >> - Be proactive. Just âthis is a s**tâ, and not report, discuss and >> (at least time to time) provide a fix/enhancement does not help. >> >> In conclusion: not helping does not help :) >> After all, this is the âpharo-devâ list. I mean, the list of people >> wanting to participate from this great, community effort. >> >> cheers, >> Esteban, still grateful of belonging to this community >> >> >> >> > Hi Esteban, > > Sorry for the long response, but I (like others) feel concerned about > your post. > I don't see any "negativity" in this forum, I don't understand why you > are saying that, but > I understand your point of view about people not contributing, being > one of them. > I think you are too pessimistic (please, drink 2, 3 beers with > friends, one for me please - ... cheers :) - > talk or forget about what is boring you and then get back with strength). > Things are moving slowly, but they are moving in the good direction and > thanks to the *dictatorship* leading of Pharo here ;-) , and thanks to > people leading > projects with Pharo. > I think you have to consider that lot of people (may be I'm wrong, and > it is just me ?) > are here because they like and share the pharo vision of software > developmnent, > but have to work for a company just to make a living. > My company is very focused on productivity and immediate gain. > Efficiency against efficacity like our boss "explained" to us... > it has some good counterparts like paying my living and my harley :) , > and bad ones, like > me not liking most of the job I have to do daily, and not agreeing > with the "vision" of the company > I live with that for now, I ride my bike very often :). > Their opinions may looks negative but they are not. > To me, people of the rmod team are lucky guys, they work on a sexy > technology. > May be they feel alone but they are not, may be this technology will > fail in next 10 years (I don't think so) > but, well, that's life, there will be a reason. Experience is good. > I'm still trying to make some smalltalk evangelism (is it > goodenglish?) around me at work, > and slowly getting people into considering smalltalk (and pharo) as a > serious technology > (for squeak it was just impossible, sorry), but have not so much time > to contribute seriously > (and as Pharo moves quite quickly, it requires quite some time > just to keeps up to date to last versions). > I saw some posts about Glorp, databases and orm (some of my current > working skills) and > consider getting into this just to help, but on the other hand > I have some other personal projects I would like to complete with Pharo. > I may look selfish, but that's another point here: Pharo has to have > more project going on to succeed. > "Pharo's "success stories" is IMHO ***very*** important - > and marketing is *****very***** important > beeing a developper, I feel a bit sad saying that but that's the > f***g reality. > Interesting coincidence, I had a discussion today with a collegue about > bad succeeding and good falling technologies (like javascript and > smaltalk in our talks)... > > Just to say keep on the good stuff please. > And I stop here. > > Regards , > > Alain > > > > >

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

> TxText will happen. It's too important to leave it unhappening :). Oh yes like OSWindow, GTToolkit and many other things. :) Stef

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

On 3/10/14 18:56, HernÃ¡n Morales Durand wrote: > > > I have the same feeling. "Pharo is yours, but I take the main > decisions". Actually it feels a little bit insulting, I am using Pharo > since several years in a domain which nobody works with Smalltalk, and > never got a survey request (except for some software engineering > research). And I bet there are people not in the Pharo/Moose/Seaside > team that didn't received any attention and they are doing significant > experiences. You are paranoid. :) We know well people in Moose and Seaside and they know that they can talk to us. Just ask and we listen. I do not think that people understand what is our life. We are not a team working on Pharo. We are a research team fighting to get some time to push Pharo and Inria gives us some money to pay engineers like igor, and esteban. > Why they don't write here? I suspect one of the reasons is Pharo is > being too motivated by software enineering research and not enough > interest for other giant domains like 3D, finance, expert systems, > HPC, etc. People perceive this. We are NOT DOING RESEARCH IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN PHARO. Repeat after me. We are NOT DOING RESEARCH IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN PHARO. We are just maintaining it and making sure that we can have a decent compiler and infrastructure to build other systems. How could we build finance, HPC, 3d without been experts. Do not dream there are full team of researchers at Inria building real 3d engines. Why would we go there? Seriously. > > > > I see years passing but money never comes. You cannot expect big > funding if you keep doing things the same as always. Exactly and do not dream about investors. Now we work hard to set the consortium. If at the end of the journey, people do not sponsor or participate then we will close it. and we will look back and say that we did our best. We create an autonomous entity that can manage Pharo but if we cannot pay an engineer with it then this is ok too. But people should not complain that open-source Pharo does not work. We do not have mozilla or google behind us and if individuals do not understand that they can get an impact = Pharo is yours then what can we do. Just continue slower with less engineers. > > > > Yes, please stop rejecting feedback that you won't like. We do not reject it. But I can say that you can stop rejecting our feedback if you do not like it too :) My feedback is: WE FIGHT EVERY SINGLE DAY TO GET RESOURCES IN PHARO. WE SPEND LOT OF ENERGY TO MAKE IT HAPPENING. and we could do something else in our life and get paid the same. So start thinking to help yourself because this is the best way to build the pharo you need and we do not need the same. > Cheers, > > HernÃ¡n

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by Hilaire

Le 03/10/2014 13:44, Esteban Lorenzano a Ã©crit : > Iâm writing this because Iâm sad about what is happening in this list. Hi Esteban, Don't be sad about negativity. I think it is a sign of good health for Pharo. First of all it is a feedback, it should raise a red flag somewhere: some expectation is not met, or an expectation for even better quality. Then it is a manifestation of hight interest and expectation regarding Pharo. After all the worst will be to ignore Pharo. Of course negative feedback are hard to manage emotionally, because those feedbacks can be improperly emotionally expressed. I guess with time people get thick skin to manage it. With Pharo becoming successful, the ratio of pure consumer will raise exponentially, there is nothing you can do with that, but well the net number of contributors will raise also... and still your number should not be that bad because your consumers are developers. (if you compare with DrGeo user, most are pure consumers) Hilaire -- Dr. Geo - http://drgeo.eu iStoa - http://istoa.drgeo.eu

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

> Fourth I have to say that I really don't get the "Pharo is yours" > motto. Is there software out there , open source or not that does not > listen to its community and does not try hard to makes its users happy > ? Pharo is not mine, If I designed Pharo I would make a lot more > diffirent choices than the ones that are included in Pharo and many of > them would be proven bad and stupid in the long run because I have > made many of them already. I want to contibute and keep pushing Pharo > forward but realistically Pharo will never become mine and that maybe > is more a good than a bad thing for the rest of you. You know. Let us take Java, C# , Javascript, Python, can you propose simply to change the core of the system and get any chance to see your changes evaluated? > > > Not helping does not help is something we will agree to disagree, > Companies invest billions of dollars on surveys to see how people feel > about a product. You may hate the idea of Pharo viewed as a product > but maybe then maybe you understimate the importance of this approach. > Sooner or later Pharo will need some serious funding to get more full > time developers and investors will see Pharo as a product. sweet dreams. Investors do not invest in languages. I talked to CamelPro people and they face exactly the same problem. > > In the end if what drives you all is to create a super cool product go > out and ask people what they truly feel about Pharo. Very few people > use smalltalk implementations , why ? What they don't like is far more > important to what they like. Learning to target features that your > users need the most is the path to success but even if the user does > not really know what he or she want getting to know your user needs or > the way he/she thinks is what will help you design tools that make > people smile but most importantly make people use on a day to day basis. > > If you are not ready to take in the negativity you wont go very far > because there is a ton of negativity out there. This is not that we cannot take negativity. Now do not expect that our days are 72h per day. So manage your frustration and help yourself this is the message. > If you find my negative bad, boy you have seen nothing . There is a > lot of frustration out there for things even unrelated to coding, > sometimes accepting that help you communicate easily with people . > Dont try to suppress negative it will become a volcano that will erupt > eventually. > > On the other hand do not tolerate trolling either, isolate these kind > of people who love to annoy others and throw the away from poisoning > the community. > > "Anything done with a measure is perfection" > > > On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 2:44 PM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com > <mailto:estebanlm@gmail.com>> wrote: > > Hi, > > Iâm writing this because Iâm sad about what is happening in this list. > Iâm seeing a lot of general negativity and non constructive ways > to discuss things. > Iâm also seeing more and more people using Pharo for their > particular interests (which is of course a good thing) but less > and less people who contribute back to Pharo. > Finally, Iâm seeing more frequently an attitude of âcustomerâ, > more than the conviction than this, Pharo, is also yoursâ¦ > > Please people, we (the pharo âcoreâ team) cannot do everything. We > do not have the manpower or the resources to hire manpower. We > would like, but we just do not have the resources (is already a > blessing that we can work on this, for now: INRIA is paying, but > what it pays is *research*, not âpharo the languageâ, so this is a > collateral advantageâ¦.) > > So, having an OPEN SOURCE project, with limited resources means > that there is a lot of things that depend on the community. > It depends on the community not just to fix, but to enlarge the > ecosystem in general too. > > So, I refuse to believe that we cannot be a cool and helpful > community. > I refuse to believe that general negativity and bad humor can > overcome the joy of participating in this collective effort. > > So, here some recommendations for enhance the way we participate: > > - Be positive. Just âthis is a s**tâ does not help. Even if it is. > - Be propositional. Just âthis is a s**tâ, and not telling what > you want/prefer does not help. > - Be proactive. Just âthis is a s**tâ, and not report, discuss and > (at least time to time) provide a fix/enhancement does not help. > > In conclusion: not helping does not help :) > After all, this is the âpharo-devâ list. I mean, the list of > people wanting to participate from this great, community effort. > > cheers, > Esteban, still grateful of belonging to this community > > > >

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by Tudor Girba

Hi, On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 9:48 PM, stepharo <stepharo(a)free.fr> wrote: > > You see we started Athens more than two years ago. It is a success for > external tools like moose and Roassal but > without TxText Athens will just be a nice package not change the face of > Pharo and we will get there. > TxText will happen. It's too important to leave it unhappening :). Doru -- www.tudorgirba.com "Every thing has its own flow"

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

On 3/10/14 17:07, Thierry Goubier wrote: > Hi Esteban, > > I'm not sure my answer will please you or stef, and maybe I shouldn't > voice it, staying being a "customer" instead of contributing "the way > you want it". Hard words, but yours are hard too. > > I'd say simply that Pharo is successfull, fairly successfull for > someone like me. It allows me to engage in complex work, in what I do > best and what affords me to be paid and have the freedom to use Pharo. > Some of those things suppose that I maintain and extend fairly complex > packages on top of Pharo, and deal with permanent, multiple > overlapping interruptions (meeting, administrative work, travels, > etc...). Same here :) > Pharo is great, it allows me to build a significant activity on top of it. > > Some of the consequences of that success? I'm looking at things that > works now, not in Pharo 5, 6, or 7. I'm a bit frightened by grandiose > rewritting attempts which will be usable in a version or 2, at best, > and leave an unsatisfying "now" situation. I'll carefully evaluate > what new stuff is integrated. New stuff I look to see if they are > usable (libcgit integration, TxText) and what I see is stuff that > builds on unstable core libs extensions (NativeBoost, Athens) Why Athens would be unstable? or nativeBoost? > on top of an already unstable version (4.0), and I'm really not > impressed by the software development process. what should it be? You know Igor will not be paid in a month from now, JB should find a job and esteban has two years to prove that the consortium flies. So if we do not clean the event and windowing systems, rick and thales will be in trouble. So we are fighting against time. > The end result is, when I see a bug, I'm already at least two versions > behind you guys... Why. I do not get why Pharo 3 would be unstable and that far from Pharo 20. > so there's nothing worth reporting. There is some progress on the way > things are being done (thanks Marcus for doing the deprecation API > backporting on 3.0) and not much on others (and I speak of > methodology, not of new features being added on). > > If you have the feeling that I don't contribute the way I should or > the way you would like, step back and ask yourself if this is not my > "unspoken" way of me saying that I don't find a way to contribute, or > that contributing effectively is too costly. > > And look! This is not a matter of resources, but maybe a matter of > slowing down a bit, so that the poor community members with limited > resources like me that are not full time on Pharo 4.0 development may > catch up :) And please, no more rejection of feedback, even negative. > It just gives me the feeling you are overstreched, and that Pharo has > a problem setting its goals. Thierry, I do not have the impression that we go fast. You see we started Athens more than two years ago. It is a success for external tools like moose and Roassal but without TxText Athens will just be a nice package not change the face of Pharo and we will get there. Writing the chapter and maintaining Smacc is already a nice tribute to the community. Just continue that and we will be happy :) Stef > > Regards, > > Thierry > > 2014-10-03 13:44 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com > <mailto:estebanlm@gmail.com>>: > > Hi, > > I'm writing this because I'm sad about what is happening in this list. > I'm seeing a lot of general negativity and non constructive ways > to discuss things. > I'm also seeing more and more people using Pharo for their > particular interests (which is of course a good thing) but less > and less people who contribute back to Pharo. > Finally, I'm seeing more frequently an attitude of "customer", > more than the conviction than this, Pharo, is also yours... > > Please people, we (the pharo "core" team) cannot do everything. We > do not have the manpower or the resources to hire manpower. We > would like, but we just do not have the resources (is already a > blessing that we can work on this, for now: INRIA is paying, but > what it pays is *research*, not "pharo the language", so this is a > collateral advantage....) > > So, having an OPEN SOURCE project, with limited resources means > that there is a lot of things that depend on the community. > It depends on the community not just to fix, but to enlarge the > ecosystem in general too. > > So, I refuse to believe that we cannot be a cool and helpful > community. > I refuse to believe that general negativity and bad humor can > overcome the joy of participating in this collective effort. > > So, here some recommendations for enhance the way we participate: > > - Be positive. Just "this is a s**t" does not help. Even if it is. > - Be propositional. Just "this is a s**t", and not telling what > you want/prefer does not help. > - Be proactive. Just "this is a s**t", and not report, discuss and > (at least time to time) provide a fix/enhancement does not help. > > In conclusion: not helping does not help :) > After all, this is the "pharo-dev" list. I mean, the list of > people wanting to participate from this great, community effort. > > cheers, > Esteban, still grateful of belonging to this community > > > >

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] Official academic consortium members

by Tudor Girba

Excellent! Doru On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 8:43 PM, Clara Allende <clari.allende(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Wohoooo :D > Le 3 oct. 2014 20:16, "Yuriy Tymchuk" <yuriy.tymchuk(a)me.com> a Ã©crit : > > Yay :) >> >> > On 03 Oct 2014, at 19:26, stepharo <stepharo(a)free.fr> wrote: >> > >> > Hi guys >> > >> > we are really happy to welcome >> > >> > University of Bern >> > Uqbar >> > Reveal from Lugano >> > >> > as official academic member of the pharo consortium. >> > I know that some other entities are following the same path and this is >> really great. >> > >> > Stef >> > >> >> >> -- www.tudorgirba.com "Every thing has its own flow"

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

>> So, having an OPEN SOURCE project, with limited resources means that there is a lot of things that depend on the community. >> It depends on the community not just to fix, but to enlarge the ecosystem in general too. > It is a matter of tolerance and patience. Not only it is a matter of people writing doc so that we do not have to do it, adding tests, checking bugs,.... proposing fixes. > > You keep doing your great job, but accept that we, outside of the > internal, core, revolutionary research being made, might have mundane > necessities. That on the daily basis have more importance than a > futuristic 128bit manycore vm that kicks JVM's ass :D But we even not working on that. JUST PLAIN BUGS. and if everybody would spend 1 hour per week reviewing and improving some libraries then we would have more impact. >> So, I refuse to believe that we cannot be a cool and helpful community. > We are. > > Email sometimes is counterproductive to the health of the > communication. It's like a fence between us. > And as the saying, transliterated, goes: "We're like dogs barking at > both sides of the fence that when together they smell at each other > and waggle their tails." :) Yes this is true too. Still Pharo is yours not mine. > >> In conclusion: not helping does not help :) > Please consider than USING Pharo is a way to contribute to it. yes but we are small and using is not enough > Even if you had infinite manpower but no one uses it, it would be worthless. Give me 2 Millions Euros and you will see that lot of people will come and use it. > >> Esteban, still grateful of belonging to this community > ditto :) > > Regards! > >

Oct. 3, 2014

Re: [Pharo-dev] About ways to participate in community and general negativity

by stepharo

On 3/10/14 14:58, J.F. Rick wrote: > Hi Esteban, > > seconding your points, it is important to acknowledge why a solid > Pharo core is important and worth striving towards even if it can be > painful. First, read Bret Victor's reflection on Doug Englebart: > http://worrydream.com/#!/Engelbart <http://worrydream.com/#%21/Engelbart> > > He makes the case that the vision that drove Englebart was important > to how he realized things, giving the specific example of how his > video conferencing system was fundamentally different than today's > screen sharing technology. Today's screen sharing is basically a nice > hack onto an existing single user system. Simply doing what Englebart > did would require a lot of restructuring at the foundation. With > Pharo, we have the possibility to really build / refactor from the > ground up, building a fundamentally better foundation, ultimately > making cool things possible. For my own work, I'm excited about the > possibility of building a new multi-touch implementation from the > ground up. That said, the current Pharo foundations have a number of > problems for me: > > (1) Graphics are still based on BitBlt, which is slow and ugly. Moving > over to Athens will address this. While I have successfully used > Athens graphics, I still get VM crashes (which are probably due to > Athens as I did not get the crashes beforehand). When you get them can you report to see what we can do? > (2) Sound does not really work. On 64-bit linux, I can't simply play a > recorded file as the sound plug-ins really only work for a 32-bit system. yes yesterday olivier was trying on linux and "alsa" seems oldish now > (3) Event handling does not get touch events. I've hacked this so far > but a sustainable solution would be great. Did you check the new OSWindow because We should now integrate and replace the old events system to use OSWindow > (4) Packages do not facilitate transfer of resources. For my purposes, > I need to add images and sound to a package. This is not really > possible right now. I was synching with Max about the status of libgit and he continues to make progress so we will get there. > I am willing to help on these problems for the community but sometimes > I need support, especially when C code is necessary, rather than Pharo > code. For instance, if I could get a VM that gives me raw touch events > into Pharo, I could take (3) from there. I'd also be willing to work > on (4) but I could use some help. One intimidating part is that there > are so many package managers for Pharo. It might be nice if we > simplified down to one: the right one. > > Anyway, you can count me in for some contribution back to Pharo core > but I might need some support from Pharo central and it won't happen > for at least another month as I'm just getting set up in the new > location (e.g., no access to a multi-touch device). Let us know and we will see how to help you. I cannot open Pharo for now because I'm not allowed by Pomodoro :) if you see what I mean. No fun allowed. But after I want to see the new events and how to remove the old one. Igor told me that they plugged the new ones into morphic so I should check. (because in the process we never integrated the cleans I did and that we never finished - that is life). > > Cheers, > > Jeff > > > > On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 7:44 AM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com > <mailto:estebanlm@gmail.com>> wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm writing this because I'm sad about what is happening in this list. > I'm seeing a lot of general negativity and non constructive ways > to discuss things. > I'm also seeing more and more people using Pharo for their > particular interests (which is of course a good thing) but less > and less people who contribute back to Pharo. > Finally, I'm seeing more frequently an attitude of "customer", > more than the conviction than this, Pharo, is also yours... > > Please people, we (the pharo "core" team) cannot do everything. We > do not have the manpower or the resources to hire manpower. We > would like, but we just do not have the resources (is already a > blessing that we can work on this, for now: INRIA is paying, but > what it pays is *research*, not "pharo the language", so this is a > collateral advantage....) > > So, having an OPEN SOURCE project, with limited resources means > that there is a lot of things that depend on the community. > It depends on the community not just to fix, but to enlarge the > ecosystem in general too. > > So, I refuse to believe that we cannot be a cool and helpful > community. > I refuse to believe that general negativity and bad humor can > overcome the joy of participating in this collective effort. > > So, here some recommendations for enhance the way we participate: > > - Be positive. Just "this is a s**t" does not help. Even if it is. > - Be propositional. Just "this is a s**t", and not telling what > you want/prefer does not help. > - Be proactive. Just "this is a s**t", and not report, discuss and > (at least time to time) provide a fix/enhancement does not help. > > In conclusion: not helping does not help :) > After all, this is the "pharo-dev" list. I mean, the list of > people wanting to participate from this great, community effort. > > cheers, > Esteban, still grateful of belonging to this community > > > > > > > -- > Jochen "Jeff" Rick, Ph.D. > http://www.je77.com/ > Skype ID: jochenrick

Oct. 3, 2014