On Jul 9, 2009, at 6:29 PM, Robert Peters wrote:
Hello everyone,
1. Whichever fork is most professional will win. I believe this was one of the goals of the Pharo project, so I'd have to say Pharo will eventually lead.
this is not our goal. Our goal is to deliver and create a biotope for other people to create their world and wealth.
2. Smalltalk in all its forms will fail unless it can grab developer interest from outside the current community. Pharo may be better than Squeak, but if everyone moves from Squeak to Pharo, your audience is still too small to be significant.
why your and not our?
I'm a web-application developer (Django, GAE) and self-taught Python coder. I learned Python because it was easy, and there is a wealth of information available on the internet. If I have any problem in Python, I simply type 'python issue' into Google and within a few clicks I'm usually looking at the answer. When I tried to learn Smalltalk, it was intensely frustrating. There were no on-line resources, no tutorials, no explanations.
This is true but we are working on fixing that; squeak by example and other.... they are free books
I think the real question is, "Is Smalltalk a better language than Python?" By better, I mean, "Can I get done more coding tasks faster, in a more sustainable way?"
Right now, the answer to this question is a resounding 'No'. But that answer might change with a slick Smalltalk package, and an abundance of developer resources. As it is, Smalltalk is a language for eccentrics. But it doesn't need to be that way.
All of this to say that I really like the beautiful simplicity of Smalltalk's main paradigm - Message Passing.
It's simple. It's elegant. But learning it is a stone bitch, and once you've learned it, it has only limited value (compared, for example, to the wealth of things one can do in Python). I wish this would change.
I do not think so. Message passing is simple and you can do a lot with it :) But give a try. I mean a real one :) Stef
-- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Squeak-Forks-Popularity---Trends-Estimate-tp3211130p323... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project