May 2011 - Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Ted F.A. van Gaalen

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 9:15 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > > On May 2, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Ted F.A. van Gaalen wrote: > >> Hi Marcus >> Ok, that makes it certain that I really have >> to move my packages to newer images >> if I want to sustain through the years, >> doesn't it? > > Or it would mean to change the meaning (or on some level: the implementation) > of the concept of the Image... you could have something that is more a declarative > specification of a frozen object graph. >But without the low-level details, and then > reconstruct the object graph of the image at startup. Arrghh! I have to look this up, this goes beyond my current knowledge (possibly also my intelligence..) Could we learn from DNA structure? > > But, the VM that would allow that would *not* be able to run existing images > of today. > > So I am actually not against what you want... I think that in 2019 we will actually > have a system that can do exactly what you want. You are an optimist, Markus :o) besides I don't yet know what I want in =>2019 :o) > > But the nirvana nirvana inspect. > of a system that supports sofware evolution in a deep way can not > be achieved with being compatible with what we have now. > > We need to change (and destructively improve) our system if we want to go there. I will certainly not associate the above line of yours with the French Revolution, oh I just did :o) Leave out the guillotine part, thanks. It's a Model though: If France c'est ok today, then Pharo will be also. :o) Regards Ted

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Marcus Denker

On May 2, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Ted F.A. van Gaalen wrote: > Hi Marcus > Ok, that makes it certain that I really have > to move my packages to newer images > if I want to sustain through the years, > doesn't it? Or it would mean to change the meaning (or on some level: the implementation) of the concept of the Image... you could have something that is more a declarative specification of a frozen object graph. But without the low-level details, and then reconstruct the object graph of the image at startup. But, the VM that would allow that would *not* be able to run existing images of today. So I am actually not against what you want... I think that in 2019 we will actually have a system that can do exactly what you want. But the nirvana of a system that supports sofware evolution in a deep way can not be achieved with being compatible with what we have now. We need to change (and destructively improve) our system if we want to go there. Marcus -- Marcus Denker -- http://www.marcusdenker.de INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD.

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Ted F.A. van Gaalen

Hi Marcus Ok, that makes it certain that I really have to move my packages to newer images if I want to sustain through the years, doesn't it? Regards Ted On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > > On May 2, 2011, at 6:49 PM, Ted F.A. van Gaalen wrote: > >> Hi All instances of HumanBeing >> >> Then, another question remains: >> >> Will my image of 2011 still work correctly >> on the VM of AD 2019 (the ones that than probably >> run on Ubuntu 2019.10, Windows11 and AppleOS/X 2019)? >> or the VM created for a newly emerged computer system? >> > If I can guarantee one thing, than it is this: the VM of 2019 > (that I will use) will *not* be compatible to todays images. > > Because, this would mean this: > > Â Â Â Â 1) No 64bit. *Ever*. We would be 32 bit forever, even on your > Â Â Â Â Â Â iPhone of 2019 with 128GB if RAM. > Â Â Â Â 2) No better GC. *EVER*. > Â Â Â Â 3) No support for good hashes. > Â Â Â Â 4) No nothing. (multiple tag bits, immutatble objects...) > Â Â Â Â 5) No support for more than one CPU, ever. > ... this list is very long. > > And it would mean that we could never clean up the VM and simplify > it. We would need to stay compatible to BitBlt from 1978 in 2018. > Does that make sense? Do *you* want to maintain a backward compatible > Balloon Pluging in 2015? > > Pharo is not relevant today. (I actually think it's not.). Now > if we *require* to *never* change the VM, then this guarantees > complete uselessness very soon. > > Do you really want to make any progress on the VM side impossible? > > Â Â Â Â Marcus > > > -- > Marcus Denker Â -- http://www.marcusdenker.de > INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD. > > >

May 2, 2011

[COTDC] 57 - ColorMap

by laurent laffont

Today: ColorMap Comment Of The Day Contest - One Day One Comment Rules: #1: Each day a not commented class is elected. Each day the best comment will be integrated with name of the author(s). #2: If you cannot comment it, deprecate it. Results: http://code.google.com/p/pharo/wiki/CommentOfTheDayContest Laurent

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Marcus Denker

On May 2, 2011, at 6:49 PM, Ted F.A. van Gaalen wrote: > Hi All instances of HumanBeing > > Then, another question remains: > > Will my image of 2011 still work correctly > on the VM of AD 2019 (the ones that than probably > run on Ubuntu 2019.10, Windows11 and AppleOS/X 2019)? > or the VM created for a newly emerged computer system? > If I can guarantee one thing, than it is this: the VM of 2019 (that I will use) will *not* be compatible to todays images. Because, this would mean this: 1) No 64bit. *Ever*. We would be 32 bit forever, even on your iPhone of 2019 with 128GB if RAM. 2) No better GC. *EVER*. 3) No support for good hashes. 4) No nothing. (multiple tag bits, immutatble objects...) 5) No support for more than one CPU, ever. ... this list is very long. And it would mean that we could never clean up the VM and simplify it. We would need to stay compatible to BitBlt from 1978 in 2018. Does that make sense? Do *you* want to maintain a backward compatible Balloon Pluging in 2015? Pharo is not relevant today. (I actually think it's not.). Now if we *require* to *never* change the VM, then this guarantees complete uselessness very soon. Do you really want to make any progress on the VM side impossible? Marcus -- Marcus Denker -- http://www.marcusdenker.de INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD.

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Ted F.A. van Gaalen

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Norbert Hartl <norbert(a)hartl.name> wrote: > > Am 02.05.2011 um 18:49 schrieb Ted F.A. van Gaalen: > >> Hi All instances of HumanBeing >> >> Then, another question remains: >> >> Will my image of 2011 still work correctly >> on the VM of AD 2019 (the ones that than probably >> run on Ubuntu 2019.10, Windows11 and AppleOS/X 2019)? >> or the VM created for a newly emerged computer system? >> > Well, forecasts are always hard to do. Basically I would say if you can get the current vm running on these releases than your image should run as well. If it doesn't run you need to think why you need such a new system. And you need to think whom to blame: intel, amd, arm, canonical, microsoft, apple, the linux community or the squeak/pharo community. Blaming no one. Anyway, coming to think of it, it could then probably run in a softBox > >> "All" Â I wish for is: >> Â -= Backward Source Compatibilty =- >> whenever possible because: >> -in five years the one could have written a huge amount of coding, >> for instance, a large ERP system, or an large internet trading >> system. Often these Â consists of (10)thousands of lines >> of coding, even in Smalltalk. Many years of development and >> effort, blood sweat and tears have gone in to it. >> Finally everything is debugged and tested. And may happy >> users depend on it >> > If it ran for 5 years without the need for a change where does this need come from out of a sudden? My text is not quite clear, sorry. I meant: Code accumulated over a longer period. > >> Assume that throughout this all coding are countless >> references to classes that are perfectly normal at the >> time of writing. This no exception. >> > Well, if you stay in this "time of writing" (meaning same vm, same image) everything should be fine. (A) I would always want to move my packages to newer releases because they [might] have better performance due to more optimized core classes ?(in addition to the VM performance) and because of adding additional logic to the existing app that could deploy new features.. > >> Then one or tow releases later: >> >> If these classes are removed, because The Respectful >> Tool Developers (e.g. (not only) Pharo) in their wisdom find it >> necessary to render these obsolete, then this has enormous >> consequences: >> One would have to edit and test, and in some cases rewrite (!) >> very large amounts of coding costing considerable amounts >> of time=money. >> Now, imagine yourself as an application programmer maintaining >> this huge amount of coding, which is not working anymore, >> not because you did it wrong, but because of chances in the >> Developmen Tool? How would feel? Like shit. Tons of work >> gone down the drain. Besides, are you going to ask your >> customer to pay for this? Â You can't of course. He/she will >> say things like: "Why? It works perfectly!"etc. >> > And they are right. Why do you want to change it if it runs perfectly? Why do you want to change it if even your customers don't want to? Thanks to smalltalk as long as you stay in the same image your development tool will stay the same. > >> Naturally one wishes to migrate to new images releases and >> happily utilize the new features that come with it, no question >> about it. But as it seems now, this is out of the question, >> because with every release, things are taken out, changed >> without any respect to backward compatibility. >> > What is it "naturally" to migrate? Just for the sake of it? Asking for trouble? I think you need a good reasons to migrate. > Please see (A)bove >> >> I might suggest. for instance: >> Â - leave deprecated classes in. when ever possible! >> Â Â if you can't, then rewrite them as a sort of emulation >> Â Â Â encapsulation, thus a kind of shell, invoking your new >> Â Â replacement class. >> >> Why not have the best of both worlds? What's the problem? >> Things can live next to each other, if you do it well. >> > Well, it wouldn't be the best of both worlds. Leaving every cruft in the image will turn it into a mess. There is a legacy problem _and_ a newcomer problem. With collecting cruft you are making it hard for newcomers to be able to work with the image. You as part of the legacy problem are a more experienced developer than a newcomer. Can you imaging how hard it is for a newbie to digest a big pile of code? > Actually, I am still a bit of a newbie in Smalltalk and yes it takes a lot of time to get familiar with all objects.. One could mark "cruft" classes as being only there for compatibility reasons, and drop the from tutorials etc. >> If you don't I can only resort to the most basic of >> system core classes. Ergo: limit myself to what I am >> (reasonable certain of) >> >> >> I see lines on this forum like: >> "Seems to be unused. I vote for removing.." >> Assuming is a bad thing in software development. >> How can you be certain that: >> No one really uses the component anymore? >> You can't. >> >> The essence of it all is: >> >> I saw Pharo fit to write production software, >> especially with Seaside! >> but how can I use it for this, seen the above >> described arguments? If all the things >> I write become useless with a next release? >> > To be honest I cannot share your view. You are willing to benefit from all the new features a new release brings along. At the same time you are reluctant to migrate your software for the changes that came together with this new features. To me it sounds that you are making your life too easy. The reluctance comes with having to migrate huge amounts of work . > You have a lot of options in software development. If you have an old system that works just don't change it. That's true. >There is a whole industry for legacy main frame applications that are kept alive _because_ they just work and there is only risk in changing it. As soon as you change the software you potentially destabilizing it. So upgrading software only for a handful of new features is a high risk if your application is that critical. I am aware of that due to hard experience. > On the other hand you shouldn't wait for too long to adopt changes in the frameworks you use. Only if you keep for too long the step is huge. You could continously migrate at an easy level. > There are intermediate levels between those two extremes and you need to chose one. I agree, but what, If a customer comes to me after 5 years and asked to modify this long forgotten application? >> >> >> (Sorry, we don't sell tires for your >> car anymore, because we chanced >> the diameter of them, we recommend >> you to change/modify your car.. ) >> > Did you every try to get a tire for a 60s car? You don't get these in the usual places! What about a car from 2010 :o) > >> A perfect example: >> (most) internet browsers >> are backward compatible. >> > Yep, and the internet suffered a lot because too many people have tried for too long to be compatible to a shitty browser like IE6. Very true True. loaded IE9 not really an improvement. using Chrome here. > > Norbert Thanks for your serious comment, Norbert. A lot of my (far from perfect) thinking is in this almost utopian perspective: I strive to keep everything in one and only image, without exception. Almost science fiction and at the moment at least for large sites technically still nearly impossible, but think for a moment of a system with all of its data completely integrated into the image.. without the use of external files, and databases. -with highly optimized and advanced collection classes. -advanced agent objects "alive" in the image for security, integrity and maintenance. -backup is merely "pushing down" the complete image, which is therefore integral and even maintains the complete status quo. -systems communicate with other systems through protected very high speed links. -interfacing with humans through virtual reality browser systems. It would require very large images (> Terabytes) I am thinking of light-logic based systems with holographic memory and a very large number of processors with hard wired Smalltalk primitives. no VM but an absolute machine. Think of the HAL9000 computer in the movies "A space Odyssey 2001" and ... 2010 2011 (many years too late :o) I want to work this out further. If you know of people/docs/sites also thinking in that direction (there must be) please let me know. Reality grows in fantasy, doesn't it? As a consequence ALL applications should be integrated in a single image. that is: all logic and data for e.g. a whole company. it's brain.. Regards Ted >> >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> On 2 May 2011 00:48, Markus Fritsche <fritsche.markus(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> 2011/4/27 Mariano Martinez Peck <marianopeck(a)gmail.com>: >>>>> And as Marcus said, most of the times (sometimes we had some problems) we >>>>> have a deprecation process where we (usually) say which should be used >>>>> instead. >>>> >>>> From a a-little-bit-more-than-user perspective I am looking at >>>> >>>> SmalltalkImage>>#hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >>>> Â Â Â self deprecated: 'Use Smalltalk globals'. >>>> Â Â Â ^globals hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >>>> >>>> Well, with a bit of analysis, I would be able to figure out, that the >>>> author might have intended that I should search the SystemDictionary >>>> myself. I feel like an additional comment would have been helpful. >>>> >>>> Same with the other problem I had with ServiceRegistry - it is gone >>>> and it is not easy to find out what that was supposed to do. Next step >>>> is to compare squeak and the Pharo releases to find out what happened >>>> to it (the issue tracker does not easily yield results for this, but >>>> maybe I searched in the wrong way). >>>> >>>> I know there is no easy fix for this, as "fast deprecation" was what >>>> made Pharo manageable compared to other image-based smalltalk dialects >>>> (not to mention anything specific ;)) but there is a lot of >>>> interesting code on squeaksource that naturally breaks - for those >>>> interested in that code, it would be helpful to give a bit more advice >>>> on "porting" and "the path of deprecation". >>>> >>> >>> An advice is simple: >>> 1. try loading the code using most recent image, try running it. >>> 2. fix errors & bugs you found >>> 3. Repeat from 1. >>> >>> This is what package maintainers should usually do all the time. >>> And there is no magic: you have to get your hands dirty and make >>> things work (again). >>> >>> Now, if nobody doing it for years, its not a Pharo failure that some >>> code turned to be broken. >>> I like that pharoers are not afraid to break things (of course if they >>> breaking them for good ;). >>> >>> And besides.. you can always use years old image and happily load all >>> code in it and it will work there. >>> >>> So, you are free to choose either: >>> Â - stay with old image version where all dusty code working >>> Â - running your code on most recent Pharo version and using its new features >>> :) >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Best regards, >>> Igor Stasenko AKA sig. >>> >>> >> > > >

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Ramon Leon

On 05/02/2011 09:49 AM, Ted F.A. van Gaalen wrote: > But as it seems now, this is out of the question, > because with every release, things are taken out, changed > without any respect to backward compatibility. I don't think that's actually true. If you step through each release I think you'll find things deprecated first, to warn people something will be delete next version. You should be able to upgrade stepwise through each version and fix your code to not use deprecated code, then move on to the next version. Deprecation is respecting backwards compatibility, it lets you know change is coming. -- Ramon Leon http://onsmalltalk.com

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] become:

by Ramon Leon

On 05/02/2011 05:41 AM, Markus Fritsche wrote: > Hello, > > become replaces all pointers to the object to point to some other > object. Actually, that's what #becomeForward: does, #become: swaps two objects replacing all pointers to the object to point to some other object and vice versa, which can cause serious issues if you aren't expecting it. #becomeForward: is quite often the behavior you'd want when you think you need #become:. -- Ramon Leon http://onsmalltalk.com

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Norbert Hartl

Am 02.05.2011 um 18:49 schrieb Ted F.A. van Gaalen: > Hi All instances of HumanBeing > > Then, another question remains: > > Will my image of 2011 still work correctly > on the VM of AD 2019 (the ones that than probably > run on Ubuntu 2019.10, Windows11 and AppleOS/X 2019)? > or the VM created for a newly emerged computer system? > Well, forecasts are always hard to do. Basically I would say if you can get the current vm running on these releases than your image should run as well. If it doesn't run you need to think why you need such a new system. And you need to think whom to blame: intel, amd, arm, canonical, microsoft, apple, the linux community or the squeak/pharo community. > "All" I wish for is: > -= Backward Source Compatibilty =- > whenever possible because: > -in five years the one could have written a huge amount of coding, > for instance, a large ERP system, or an large internet trading > system. Often these consists of (10)thousands of lines > of coding, even in Smalltalk. Many years of development and > effort, blood sweat and tears have gone in to it. > Finally everything is debugged and tested. And may happy > users depend on it > If it ran for 5 years without the need for a change where does this need come from out of a sudden? > Assume that throughout this all coding are countless > references to classes that are perfectly normal at the > time of writing. This no exception. > Well, if you stay in this "time of writing" (meaning same vm, same image) everything should be fine. > Then one or tow releases later: > > If these classes are removed, because The Respectful > Tool Developers (e.g. (not only) Pharo) in their wisdom find it > necessary to render these obsolete, then this has enormous > consequences: > One would have to edit and test, and in some cases rewrite (!) > very large amounts of coding costing considerable amounts > of time=money. > Now, imagine yourself as an application programmer maintaining > this huge amount of coding, which is not working anymore, > not because you did it wrong, but because of chances in the > Developmen Tool? How would feel? Like shit. Tons of work > gone down the drain. Besides, are you going to ask your > customer to pay for this? You can't of course. He/she will > say things like: "Why? It works perfectly!"etc. > And they are right. Why do you want to change it if it runs perfectly? Why do you want to change it if even your customers don't want to? Thanks to smalltalk as long as you stay in the same image your development tool will stay the same. > Naturally one wishes to migrate to new images releases and > happily utilize the new features that come with it, no question > about it. But as it seems now, this is out of the question, > because with every release, things are taken out, changed > without any respect to backward compatibility. > What is it "naturally" to migrate? Just for the sake of it? Asking for trouble? I think you need a good reasons to migrate. > > I might suggest. for instance: > - leave deprecated classes in. when ever possible! > if you can't, then rewrite them as a sort of emulation > encapsulation, thus a kind of shell, invoking your new > replacement class. > > Why not have the best of both worlds? What's the problem? > Things can live next to each other, if you do it well. > Well, it wouldn't be the best of both worlds. Leaving every cruft in the image will turn it into a mess. There is a legacy problem _and_ a newcomer problem. With collecting cruft you are making it hard for newcomers to be able to work with the image. You as part of the legacy problem are a more experienced developer than a newcomer. Can you imaging how hard it is for a newbie to digest a big pile of code? > If you don't I can only resort to the most basic of > system core classes. Ergo: limit myself to what I am > (reasonable certain of) > > > I see lines on this forum like: > "Seems to be unused. I vote for removing.." > Assuming is a bad thing in software development. > How can you be certain that: > No one really uses the component anymore? > You can't. > > The essence of it all is: > > I saw Pharo fit to write production software, > especially with Seaside! > but how can I use it for this, seen the above > described arguments? If all the things > I write become useless with a next release? > To be honest I cannot share your view. You are willing to benefit from all the new features a new release brings along. At the same time you are reluctant to migrate your software for the changes that came together with this new features. To me it sounds that you are making your life too easy. You have a lot of options in software development. If you have an old system that works just don't change it. There is a whole industry for legacy main frame applications that are kept alive _because_ they just work and there is only risk in changing it. As soon as you change the software you potentially destabilizing it. So upgrading software only for a handful of new features is a high risk if your application is that critical. On the other hand you shouldn't wait for too long to adopt changes in the frameworks you use. Only if you keep for too long the step is huge. You could continously migrate at an easy level. There are intermediate levels between those two extremes and you need to chose one. > > > (Sorry, we don't sell tires for your > car anymore, because we chanced > the diameter of them, we recommend > you to change/modify your car.. ) > Did you every try to get a tire for a 60s car? You don't get these in the usual places! > A perfect example: > (most) internet browsers > are backward compatible. > Yep, and the internet suffered a lot because too many people have tried for too long to be compatible to a shitty browser like IE6. Norbert > I rest my case, enough said.. > > Kind regards > Ted > > > > > > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> On 2 May 2011 00:48, Markus Fritsche <fritsche.markus(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> 2011/4/27 Mariano Martinez Peck <marianopeck(a)gmail.com>: >>>> And as Marcus said, most of the times (sometimes we had some problems) we >>>> have a deprecation process where we (usually) say which should be used >>>> instead. >>> >>> From a a-little-bit-more-than-user perspective I am looking at >>> >>> SmalltalkImage>>#hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >>> self deprecated: 'Use Smalltalk globals'. >>> ^globals hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >>> >>> Well, with a bit of analysis, I would be able to figure out, that the >>> author might have intended that I should search the SystemDictionary >>> myself. I feel like an additional comment would have been helpful. >>> >>> Same with the other problem I had with ServiceRegistry - it is gone >>> and it is not easy to find out what that was supposed to do. Next step >>> is to compare squeak and the Pharo releases to find out what happened >>> to it (the issue tracker does not easily yield results for this, but >>> maybe I searched in the wrong way). >>> >>> I know there is no easy fix for this, as "fast deprecation" was what >>> made Pharo manageable compared to other image-based smalltalk dialects >>> (not to mention anything specific ;)) but there is a lot of >>> interesting code on squeaksource that naturally breaks - for those >>> interested in that code, it would be helpful to give a bit more advice >>> on "porting" and "the path of deprecation". >>> >> >> An advice is simple: >> 1. try loading the code using most recent image, try running it. >> 2. fix errors & bugs you found >> 3. Repeat from 1. >> >> This is what package maintainers should usually do all the time. >> And there is no magic: you have to get your hands dirty and make >> things work (again). >> >> Now, if nobody doing it for years, its not a Pharo failure that some >> code turned to be broken. >> I like that pharoers are not afraid to break things (of course if they >> breaking them for good ;). >> >> And besides.. you can always use years old image and happily load all >> code in it and it will work there. >> >> So, you are free to choose either: >> - stay with old image version where all dusty code working >> - running your code on most recent Pharo version and using its new features >> :) >> >> >> -- >> Best regards, >> Igor Stasenko AKA sig. >> >> >

May 2, 2011

Re: [Pharo-users] Backward compatibility [WAS] Re: [ANN] PharoDev-1.3-13173

by Ted F.A. van Gaalen

Hi All instances of HumanBeing Then, another question remains: Will my image of 2011 still work correctly on the VM of AD 2019 (the ones that than probably run on Ubuntu 2019.10, Windows11 and AppleOS/X 2019)? or the VM created for a newly emerged computer system? "All" I wish for is: -= Backward Source Compatibilty =- whenever possible because: -in five years the one could have written a huge amount of coding, for instance, a large ERP system, or an large internet trading system. Often these consists of (10)thousands of lines of coding, even in Smalltalk. Many years of development and effort, blood sweat and tears have gone in to it. Finally everything is debugged and tested. And may happy users depend on it Assume that throughout this all coding are countless references to classes that are perfectly normal at the time of writing. This no exception. Then one or tow releases later: If these classes are removed, because The Respectful Tool Developers (e.g. (not only) Pharo) in their wisdom find it necessary to render these obsolete, then this has enormous consequences: One would have to edit and test, and in some cases rewrite (!) very large amounts of coding costing considerable amounts of time=money. Now, imagine yourself as an application programmer maintaining this huge amount of coding, which is not working anymore, not because you did it wrong, but because of chances in the Developmen Tool? How would feel? Like shit. Tons of work gone down the drain. Besides, are you going to ask your customer to pay for this? You can't of course. He/she will say things like: "Why? It works perfectly!"etc. Naturally one wishes to migrate to new images releases and happily utilize the new features that come with it, no question about it. But as it seems now, this is out of the question, because with every release, things are taken out, changed without any respect to backward compatibility. I might suggest. for instance: - leave deprecated classes in. when ever possible! if you can't, then rewrite them as a sort of emulation encapsulation, thus a kind of shell, invoking your new replacement class. Why not have the best of both worlds? What's the problem? Things can live next to each other, if you do it well. If you don't I can only resort to the most basic of system core classes. Ergo: limit myself to what I am (reasonable certain of) I see lines on this forum like: "Seems to be unused. I vote for removing.." Assuming is a bad thing in software development. How can you be certain that: No one really uses the component anymore? You can't. The essence of it all is: I saw Pharo fit to write production software, especially with Seaside! but how can I use it for this, seen the above described arguments? If all the things I write become useless with a next release? (Sorry, we don't sell tires for your car anymore, because we chanced the diameter of them, we recommend you to change/modify your car.. ) A perfect example: (most) internet browsers are backward compatible. I rest my case, enough said.. Kind regards Ted On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 2 May 2011 00:48, Markus Fritsche <fritsche.markus(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> 2011/4/27 Mariano Martinez Peck <marianopeck(a)gmail.com>: >>> And as Marcus said, most of the times (sometimes we had some problems) we >>> have a deprecation process where we (usually) say which should be used >>> instead. >> >> From a a-little-bit-more-than-user perspective I am looking at >> >> SmalltalkImage>>#hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >> Â Â Â self deprecated: 'Use Smalltalk globals'. >> Â Â Â ^globals hasBindingThatBeginsWith: aString >> >> Well, with a bit of analysis, I would be able to figure out, that the >> author might have intended that I should search the SystemDictionary >> myself. I feel like an additional comment would have been helpful. >> >> Same with the other problem I had with ServiceRegistry - it is gone >> and it is not easy to find out what that was supposed to do. Next step >> is to compare squeak and the Pharo releases to find out what happened >> to it (the issue tracker does not easily yield results for this, but >> maybe I searched in the wrong way). >> >> I know there is no easy fix for this, as "fast deprecation" was what >> made Pharo manageable compared to other image-based smalltalk dialects >> (not to mention anything specific ;)) but there is a lot of >> interesting code on squeaksource that naturally breaks - for those >> interested in that code, it would be helpful to give a bit more advice >> on "porting" and "the path of deprecation". >> > > An advice is simple: > 1. try loading the code using most recent image, try running it. > 2. fix errors & bugs you found > 3. Repeat from 1. > > This is what package maintainers should usually do all the time. > And there is no magic: you have to get your hands dirty and make > things work (again). > > Now, if nobody doing it for years, its not a Pharo failure that some > code turned to be broken. > I like that pharoers are not afraid to break things (of course if they > breaking them for good ;). > > And besides.. you can always use years old image and happily load all > code in it and it will work there. > > So, you are free to choose either: > Â - stay with old image version where all dusty code working > Â - running your code on most recent Pharo version and using its new features > :) > > > -- > Best regards, > Igor Stasenko AKA sig. > >

May 2, 2011