Stef, Sorry you had a bad day, but I'm glad to see you curing yourself of it. Re things being done to Squeak "anyway, and after you were bashed for it," (which I remember BTW) please ask yourself what Squeak would look like right now had Pharo not taken shape. I submit that all the offending code would still be in place, Polymorph would have been ignored by the community, and Nile would be a river in Egypt. Bill -----Original Message----- From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr [mailto:pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Stéphane Ducasse Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 3:13 PM To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Development Subject: [Pharo-project] About my recursive blues :) Hi guys Sometimes I'm not in good mood. Today I was in a bad bad mood. Quite bad even badder. I was wondering why I was doing all that and the rest. What was the use to do Pharo if we get Squeak doing exactly the same - Ok we were right long time ago but still seeing all the removal of crappy code we begged to be removed and got bashed for and also doing all that effort and seeing it redone was not helping. Being right sometimes is not even cool :) So a plain bad day.... cold and rainy. I was frustrated that I cannot be somebody else, doing stuff full time and no other duties and going faster. In short nothing was working and I was a frustation ball like I'm good at being. But my kids were there and we had to go swimming! After going swimming and not thinking then thinking and discussing with some remote friends and emails. (Thanks guys you know who you are) also thinking about other people's attention and remarks in other contexts, my good mood came back even stronger than before because I came up to the conclusion that my remote friends were right (BTW thanks pharoers some of you inspire me today during my bad mood - alain, henrik, danny, lukas...) So what is the conclusion of all that? - I have a cool job (one of the best research positions in europe - not easy everyday but cool and with people supporting me with my crazy idea....imagine coding in smalltalk building an international team doing smalltalkish stuff). - we can invest for 5 years or even 10. Close your eyes and imagine we can decide now what we want to do now for the next 10 years and do it because we decided that this is fun. Amazing. No clients, no venture guys telling us the truth of life. - To a friend to which I was saying that I'm not that smart, that guy told me that smart is not the only measure: you can measure your impact, the books you wrote, the energy that other people took and got inspired and all kind of other measures.... :) So I can tell you I was down but this is good because I could think about what I really want to do. And I want to have an innovative Smalltalk system that can be used to develop business and innovative. (for example I would like to see if the new event system can be used to save Genie - one of the coolest handwriting recognition system I see). So I will not be extra-smart but I will learn and I will do it bit by bit. And I want to make it fun and beautiful. May be we will be able to go faster (it depends mainly on you guys :)) but I want 10 years or 15 or even 20 years of fun with a cool system and it is there in my hand (at three keystrokes from my keuboard). We will build it. Stef (sorry for the one of you that have to listen my bad mood I'm curing myself). _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project

Hey Stef, isn't anything wrong with having a bad mood day, or even thinking that the path chosen wasn't right. All of us have that kind of feelings sometimes. You are human, we are all. But don't let one day override the good days. Glad to see that you had a time with your family, because that always gives you a strong support. And new energy to keep the work going. I, as many others, are very proud about the way Pharo is going. Pharo is also an important and strategic part of many new project and business. This is something we are very grateful. To you and every other people involved with Pharo some way. A big thank you all. We are commited to Pharo and we will follow contributing to it as we can, even little things. Respect to Squeak, I seriously began to write a reply to the mail from Andreas announcing the removal of Etoys, I was absolutely enraged. Not because the change itself that has evident technical merits but for the absolutely lack of seriousness and touch from Andreas. Lets be clear, I have lost my respect for him, why?, because he isn't a leader. He is pushing Squeak to where he wants. It is his own Squeak. He stated before, and even fought several times with people that suggested that etoys should be removed from squeak, that etoys is a fundamental distinctive, unseparated part of squeak, to the point that squeak without etoys isn't squeak. Similar bad karma for him for burning Stef et al for criticized the way that Squeak was being at the time, for burning Keith and installing his own process (that if you review the commit logs, just half dozen of people are actively using to commit to trunk). Then he goes and does everything that several people told it that must be done as if were a novice idea. As if the opinion of others weren't worth. But when he implements the very same idea, then it is the logical next step for Squeak and the change that Squeak was waiting for. This really irritates me. Besides, when I asked what are the middle-term and long-term goals for squeak they said that there was no one. And that appears to be right. The changes respond to mood of Andreas and are more than random without a previous stated plan. The plan is created day to day, depending of the desires of Andreas. In the end I discarded the mail. It didn't worth the time. I let it rest. Honestly I don't know how the board will support this random change occurring in Squeak. The board can barely state that their only goal right now, and in fact the full last year was to be comply with the SFC requirements. Now, de facto, the goals are minimal kernel with a mixture of cuis + mc + m17n, everything unloadable, no etoys, new text editor, new trails for changes files, and a lot of small changes that I suppose are trying to speed up the image. But the board can't show a list of goals. All or most of this changes, made, approved, selected and decided by a single person. What if tomorrow some organization offers some unrefusable amount to Andreas to let Squeak behind and go to work in X. What will happen to current Andreas' Squeak? Who nows? Not even the board. Well that was some of the feelings I wanted to express to the squeak list and opted not to. But now, with your mail, I must say that I can imagine what you must felt. Not only anger, but sad. A deep sad at watching this happen. So sad to see so many intelligent people forget so easily the previous and exhausting discussions. Well, Stef I support you and the full Pharo people. This community is more honest and more humble. That worths a lot for me. So, don't let yourself down. We are a great and heterogeneous community. We can do it. Cheers -- Miguel Cobá http://miguel.leugim.com.mx

On 06/01/2010 20:13, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:

Hi guys

Sometimes I'm not in good mood. Today I was in a bad bad mood. Quite bad even badder. I was wondering why I was doing all that and the rest. What was the use to do Pharo if we get Squeak doing exactly the same - Ok we were right long time ago but still seeing all the removal of crappy code we begged to be removed and got bashed for and also doing all that effort and seeing it redone was not helping. Being right sometimes is not even cool :) So a plain bad day.... cold and rainy. I was frustrated that I cannot be somebody else, doing stuff full time and no other duties and going faster. In short nothing was working and I was a frustation ball like I'm good at being.

One thing I've noticed is that Squeak, Pharo and Cuis are all pulling in different directions and I suspect that they simply wouldn't work if attempted in a single shared project. I feel that having the different forks is actually a good thing since people can do different things in the different forks which can then be shared or at least inspire others :) You're doing good work and I for one appreciate it :)