On Aug 29, 2011, at 10:38 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote:

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Is the current system simple and minimal?

No, it is complex and it is getting bigger with every release.

No, i wouldn't say so.

Most fixes and improvements are still about cleaning things out and fixing bugs. But not about new features.

Yes, you are right. In fact Pharo 1.4 is roughly 1 MB smaller than Pharo 1.3.

Do not compare image size!!!!!! 1.4 is smaller only(!) because we unloaded ScriptLoader13. And every MC commit makes the image bigger, as does every update.

Zinc is an excellent example, because it is fully backward compatible. I don't see that with RPackage, SystemAnnouncements, Ring, Shout (before Alan fixed it), with the proposed RB changes, ...

I do not want my live to be defined by being backward compatibe to what we have. Life is short. I mean that seriously: Should it be my life's goal to make a backward compatible system? I spend quite some time thinking about what to do with my future. Go to industry, have a real salary, and play with etoys the evening? Stay in research and write lots of papers with lots of greek letters that nobody reads? Or it there a third way possible? Maybe? But the idea of building a Smaltalk system whose only goal is to be compatbile to Squeak-minus-eToys I never even thought about ;-)

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Right, but you can easily force people not to follow. I don't understand why all the people that still use Pharo 1.0 or 1.1 don't speak up?

Are there a lot of 1.0 and 1.1 users left? They don't submit bug reports, for sure. Marcus -- Marcus Denker -- http://marcusdenker.de