On 9/20/2010 5:30 PM, Levente Uzonyi wrote:

On Mon, 20 Sep 2010, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

I presently do not see a Pro-business or even particularly business-friendly vision from Squeak.

Just my perspective and opinions.

Thanks, this is really helpful. The only thing I don't really get is what do you mean by "pro-business" and "business-friendly". What makes Pharo "pro-business"? The pre-installed tools? The familiar looking default UI? (only for mac users)

Hello Levente,

Pharo the artifact is itself not necessarily more or less pro-business than Squeak. Pharo the vision, goals, leadership and community are.

Stephane posted a message on the list back in August:
"Poll: missing libraries to support business"

I have never seen such a post on squeak-dev. Nor in my 10+- years on squeak-dev seen many posts for/about business that received much audience. Now if you post about the fun things, etoys, midi, robots, mpeg, ... you get a fair amount of response. Many/most Squeakers are very Squeak being multimedia. I am definitely pro that. But I believe if you support people making money with Squeak/Pharo that the fun stuff is also supported. It has been reasonably, historically the opinion of many that Squeak equates to multimedia, with a strong educational leaning. If you wanted something else, it could be tolerated but not well supported. The Seaside guys had to work hard to arrive at their status. As I say, these are my opinions from reading and lightly participating in the Squeak community for 10+- years.

I have had a very long love/hate relationship with Squeak. I really, really love Squeak. The hate comes in when I find something I can't do in Squeak but can easily do in Python. That frustrates the heck out of me. Python is very pro-business, very business friendly, and it has a large enough community to accomplish those goals. Squeak doesn't have the community to accomplish all that Python has. But Squeak/Smalltalk is much more stable target. Code can last so much longer, be developed much faster. So I believe the community, though smaller, can and will accomplish more and better. At least I believe I accomplish more, better, faster in Squeak/Pharo than in Python.

Most often Squeak lost me whenever I have do things outside of Squeak or Python interfacing with the OS or outside libraries. Python has superior support for databases, etc.
Currently I have a business requirement to interface with a COM dll. So at the moment Python empowers or enables me to do that and Squeak/Pharo do not.

This is all I have to do in Python. I have this in my Python app which interfaces the COM dll to interface the server to which I need to communicate.

def make_libraries(self):
�� """
�� Before you can use the libraries inside Python, you have to run once the makepy.py script
�� (.\Lib\site-packages\win32com\client\makepy.py).
�� Select "The Desired Library" in the choose box.
�� This will create a wrapper library usable by Python and in the path.
�� mylib = win32com.client.Dispatch("DesiredLibraryClass") and use.
�� """
�� # This line should default to the Python being used by this program.
�� os.system(r"Lib\site-packages\win32com\client\makepy.py")

And most of the above code is simply to remind me how to use the makepy.py library as I use it so seldom that I don't remember between invocations. Most of my time is spent using the library it provides which gives me access to the dll. I would love to have this capability in Squeak/Pharo. It enables/empowers the little guy who has ideas but can't go low level. He can do Python/Smalltalk but not C or system level programming.

I see more openness for this in Pharo than Squeak. Sure Squeak would accept such a library if it became available. But there isn't much community desire for such business software. It isn't sexy or fun. But it does get the job done and enables business and commerce.

From squeak.org
"Squeak is the vehicle for a wide range of projects from multimedia applications, educational platforms to commercial web application development."

From pharo-project.org
Pharo's goal is to deliver a clean, innovative, free open-source Smalltalk environment. By providing a stable and small core system, excellent developer tools, and maintained releases, Pharo is an attractive platform to build and deploy mission critical Smalltalk applications.

Which sounds business oriented, business friendly, pro-business?

Nothing in the Squeak statement sounds like business unless your business is multimedia, education and web apps. Mine is none of those. But I want what is in the Pharo description. Yes, I know much of what is in that description is also in Squeak the artifact. Which leads back to vision, goals, leadership and community. Overtime the artifacts will potentially diverge more due to those intangibles. Those elements in Squeak tend towards primarily multimedia and education and only very secondarily Seaside. Whereas those intangibles in Pharo are seeking to build a community of businesses, researchers, students and individuals who want to use Smalltalk as the basis for what is important to them. IMHO this is a very important aspect for building for the future.

Watching the lists, the players, the discussions and my participation in those has lead to these very subjective opinions. I would be extraordinarily please for Squeak to prove me wrong. I think that Squeak can as it becomes smaller and more modular. But that's the artifact. The intangibles would have to be improved also. The intangibles are often as important and sometimes more so than the artifact. And perceptions are a real basis for decisions.

I would love Squeak/Pharo to eliminate or at least incredibly reduce any need, requirement or desire to drop down to Python to accomplish any of my goals or requirements.

Hope this helps.

Jimmie