- Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-users] Mea Culpa

by Sebastian Sastre

> On Jan 22, 2015, at 9:02 PM, offray(a)riseup.net wrote: > > Trying to listen the community __before__ tracing the goals for SRP is my main message here. A more "etnographer" approach instead of the "saleman" one, if I can make the analogy. This is good advice. Also Benâs. Richard that attitude you had in this thread is making your campaign more interesting, Iâm looking forward to what comes after these reflections. About the fragmentation we have, itâs true. I think is a "necessary evilâ to get things done in each dialect/framework/artefact. If we somehow could make easy to keep (sub)communities connected, friends, we might be able to capitalize on Metcalfeâs law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law> in everybodyâs favor. And for me too it was the case of a friend that repeatedly cared to show me how the whole development cycle in smalltalk was âdifferentâ and interesting. So friend sounds like a strategic word to make things better

Jan. 23, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] The Smalltalk Report issue

by Rafael Luque

Stef thank you for the valuable resources. However, as Marcus said I'm looking an issue from 1997 and the archive only contains issues until 1996 :-( 2015-01-23 0:10 GMT+01:00 Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr>: > We have them in the ESUG archive: > http://esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/TheSmalltalkReport/ > > but this is only till 1996. > > > On 22 Jan 2015, at 23:02, stepharo <stepharo(a)free.fr> wrote: > > currently uploading ST issues at > http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/TheSmalltalkReport/ > grab them when they will be available :) > We should put them on torrents > > Stef > > Le 22/1/15 00:52, Rafael Luque a Ã©crit : > > Hi Pharoers, > > I'm looking for The Smalltalk Report volume 6 issue 4 (1997) because I'd > like to read the first article mentioning refactoring by Kent Beck: "Make > it run, Make it right: Desing through Refactoring" published in this number. > > I've found the following archive from 1991 to 1996: > http://www.macqueen.us/stIndex.html > > Anyone know where can I found this old issue or at least the article? > > Thank you. > > > > >

Jan. 23, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Popular

by Martin BÃ¤hr

Excerpts from Ben Coman's message of 2015-01-23 08:56:58 +0100: > In addition, I consider running on pure 64-bit OS to be critical to gain > credibility in the wider community. yes, i was quite surprised to find that 64bit is not supported yet. in my case i had to pick all the 32bit dependencies by hand to make it work which was quite an effort. > So how do we target experts? > * Experts are probably more suspicious of hyperbole and cheer leading. > * Experts are in demand and busy - so short targeted concrete examples > would be good. > * Maybe quickstart tutorials demonstrating foundations for different > application areas > * Web (e.g. http://zn.stfx.eu/zn/build-and-deploy-1st-webapp/) definitely! for me this is the tutorial that had me hooked into hacking on pharo. > * Games > * Business GUI > * Business RDMS App > * Demonstrating Pharo's tight debug/compile/resume workflow oh yes! greetings, martin. -- eKita - the online platform for your entire academic life -- chief engineer eKita.co pike programmer pike.lysator.liu.se caudium.net societyserver.org secretary beijinglug.org mentor fossasia.org foresight developer foresightlinux.org realss.com unix sysadmin Martin BÃ¤hr working in china http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/

Jan. 23, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Pillar A4 :)

by Ben Coman

btw, /putting on the paranoid hat/ be careful using that really nice lighthouse graphic. Its someone else's copyright. Actually I can almost see a cartoon guy on the top platform looking out over a fleet of Java and C++ boats on a stormy sea. cheers -ben On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:16 AM, stepharo <stepharo(a)free.fr> wrote: > Hi sven > > here is one of several that I will send :) > > Stef >

Jan. 23, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Popular

by Ben Coman

Richard, My post was somewhat in response to your campaign, but not trying to discourage you. Its just providing some counterpoint to consider in the big picture. Maybe I should not of posted another opinion piece so soon on top of the other threads, so probably even though you can pick holes in my answers to your questions, some advance notice I'm going to _try_ limiting further followups to let things settle down a bit. On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 5:08 AM, horrido <horrido.hobbies(a)gmail.com> wrote: > So let me see if I understand this... > > Pharo is not ready for prime time because it's still gestating? For some (the early adopters) Pharo is already ready for prime time. People are doing successful business with Pharo now! Successful enough to want to be paying members of the Pharo Consortium. > At what point will Pharo be ready for everyone in the world to use? Five years from now? Ten years? > I agree with your implication. It is not beneficial to treat Pharo as unready-for-the-masses for an extended period. Now PG says you need: 1) a free implementation - Got it! Pharo's MIT license. 2) something to hack - Got it! There is the IDE itself, the PBE develops a game, and there is a broad base of open source applications and libraries. 3) a book - Currently we have only half of this. We have a very good book in PBE, but it is outdated several years. Early adopters and existing Pharo users can work around this, but for potential incoming masses, an up to date book is a critical aspect. There is current activity to update PBE for Pharo 4 (and now I realise I should help with it more, Thanks for clarifying my thinking on this.) To bring in the masses before this update is ready I believe could do more harm than good. It would be embarrassing and a great disappointed to push a campaign generating an influx of users that end up criticizing this aspect, and missing the chance for them to experience the value of Pharo - and you might only get one chance to create a good impression. So for me, right now PBE for Pharo 4 is the critical dependency before pushing a big advertising agenda, with a plan to align such with the Pharo 4 release. In addition, I consider running on pure 64-bit OS to be critical to gain credibility in the wider community. In my conservative view, for outside consumption I don't think its critical this be completed for Pharo 4, but aligning the release of a technology preview would be very nice. > > And when it is ready for the world to use, can we be sure that the world > will use it? "If you build it, they will come." Really?? > That is a null point. That would be the same in ten years, five years and today. Besides, we are also building Pharo for ourselves. Indeed, "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch. [1] " Of course we want Pharo to grow because that will help fund its improvement and sustainability. But I don't think we need the whole world (yet). That brings other complications, like maybe design by committee. PG says "Everyone knows that it's not a good idea to have a language designed by a committee. Committees yield bad design. But I think the worst danger of committees is that they interfere with redesign" and that last point is important to consider for Pharo's vision [2]. [1] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s02.html [2] https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf (I think an update is in progress) > Have we not learned that grassroots guarantee nothing? The language > landscape is littered with dead or dying languages that failed to rise > above > grassroots. > Nothing is guaranteed. But Pharo's steady organic growth makes me optimistic. My point is, Pharo has not had a BIG advertising campaign before. Growing organically has perhaps allowed us to get by with a few loose ends (like documentation) with the subsequent volume of newcomer questions arising from this being manageable. At least newcomers get a positive impression from fast response to their queries. A big influx a novice queries might result in either: * Pharo improvements delayed as the experts spend all delayed in improving Pharo; or * newcomers being frustrated with questions going unanswered. The advantage of organic growth is that you have a steady progression of people from novice to journeyman to master. "Ideally" the pool of journeyman available to answer novice questions grows at the same rate as the pool of newcomers grows. I consider my own journey. I lurked for a long while. Then I started contributing to the discussion. Of course, the easiest thing to contribute is "an opinion" -- and there is some value in that, but it doesn't actually create code. Actually it drags other coders away from their coding, so productivity goes down (so maybe sorry also for this thread). But its an investment in the future that hopefully the newcomer grows into a code contributor. At this stage I was probably a net drain (not that I noticed at the time). Then December 2013 there was a call for help whittling down the Issue List, so I dove in. The effect was I really learnt A LOT reviewing how others fixed code and getting my code fixes reviewed (and I recommend others do the same). So now I feel I can add more value. > The idea that hackers know, or can determine, what is a "good" language > strikes me as rather presumptuous and incorrect. And whose definition of > "good" are we using anyway? > PG says... "It may be that the majority of programmers can't tell a good language from a bad one. But that's no different with any other tool. It doesn't mean that it's a waste of time to try designing a good language. Expert hackers can tell a good language when they see one, and they'll use it. Expert hackers are a tiny minority, admittedly, but that tiny minority write all the good software, and their influence is such that the rest of the programmers will tend to use whatever language they use." And I guess if anyone would know, it is the founder of Y-Combinator [2] (DropBox, AirBnB, Heroku and others). [2] http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/26/paul-graham-37-y-combinator-companies-have… So how do we target experts? * Experts are probably more suspicious of hyperbole and cheer leading. * Experts are in demand and busy - so short targeted concrete examples would be good. * Maybe quickstart tutorials demonstrating foundations for different application areas * Web (e.g. http://zn.stfx.eu/zn/build-and-deploy-1st-webapp/) * Games * Business GUI * Business RDMS App * Demonstrating Pharo's tight debug/compile/resume workflow * Acknowledging past criticisms and how they have been addressed, or how times have changed (Richard I see you trying to do this, but its a hard task) cheers -ben

Jan. 23, 2015

The SRP Has Moved

by horrido

By now, every Smalltalker and his dog have heard about the Smalltalk Renaissance Program. So it is no longer necessary to stay in the Pharo forum. I have moved all future SRP-related discussions to the /English/ forum at forum.world.st. I ask everyone who is even remotely interested in the campaign to join the English forum (aka Smalltalk Research <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/smalltalk-research> ). I remind everyone that the SRP is about you and your community. Without you, there is no campaign. Please participate. Thank you. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/The-SRP-Has-Moved-tp4801141.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Jan. 23, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] The Smalltalk Report issue

by Marcus Denker

We have them in the ESUG archive: http://esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/TheSmalltalkReport/ <http://esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/TheSmalltalkReport/> but this is only till 1996. > On 22 Jan 2015, at 23:02, stepharo <stepharo(a)free.fr> wrote: > > currently uploading ST issues at > http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/TheSmalltalkReport/ > grab them when they will be available :) > We should put them on torrents > > Stef > > Le 22/1/15 00:52, Rafael Luque a Ã©crit : >> Hi Pharoers, >> >> I'm looking for The Smalltalk Report volume 6 issue 4 (1997) because I'd like to read the first article mentioning refactoring by Kent Beck: "Make it run, Make it right: Desing through Refactoring" published in this number. >> >> I've found the following archive from 1991 to 1996: http://www.macqueen.us/stIndex.html >> >> Anyone know where can I found this old issue or at least the article? >> >> Thank you. > >

Jan. 22, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Mea Culpa

by offray＠riseup.net

Hi, On 2015-01-22 16:27, horrido wrote: > Offray wrote >> I think that SRP has a "flaw" of showing itself as some kind of way to >> save Smalltalk of its unpopular destiny, not being on top 10 of TIOBE >> or >> being a niche platform, but for me that's not a cruel destiny and if >> it >> were that's not the best way to fight against it, but by building >> stuff >> that more people can use. Talking by making instead of talking by >> talking. We can start with some small community and spread from there >> (interactive documentation is my approach). > > This is the popular "if you build it, they will come" philosophy. It > /may/ > work, but I seriously doubt it. > No. I don't believe in the build -> come assumption. Is more like non-popular but meaninful in the context I care about by the transformations it empowers on that context and with the potential to go beyond that context. Think small, but interconnected. >> So may be the best way of SRP to serve Smalltalk could be to not be so >> "self-serving" about its own goals (popularity, jvm, javascript, >> enterprise, TIOBE) and show the diversity of views and concerns of the >> Smalltalk community. To be a place for diversity in Smalltalk (may be >> a >> curator of dispersed experiences elsewhere). > > I don't understand what you mean by "self-serving". The SRP does not > serve > itself â it serves *you*, the Smalltalk community. It's sole purpose is > to > promote your language, to raise it in the public consciousness, to get > people to try it. There is no other agenda. > > Of course, whether or not you /want/ this attention is a different > question. > I mean self-serving in the sense that is about making Smalltalk popular, advocating for enterprise, jvm or javascript, which are goals traced by the project itself. I don't think that they're not important (at least for some in the community), but I think that they don't reflect the various concerns and potentials that can help to Smalltalk as a broader community. Trying to listen the community __before__ tracing the goals for SRP is my main message here. A more "etnographer" approach instead of the "saleman" one, if I can make the analogy. Cheers, Offray

Jan. 22, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Glorp on Pharo 4

by Craig

Sven, It took a bit, but I figured it out. If you try to login with a login that has previously been used, then you get this DNU message. I was following your "reddit-st-in-10-cool-pharo-classes" and it happened when I ran the first test. This was the second time that the DefaultLogin was used (it was lazily initialised by the create tables call). When I nill-ed out the DefaultLogin the tests all passed. Craig -----Original Message----- From: Pharo-users [mailto:pharo-users-bounces@lists.pharo.org] On Behalf Of Sven Van Caekenberghe Sent: 22 January 2015 10:19 AM To: Any question about pharo is welcome Subject: Re: [Pharo-users] Glorp on Pharo 4 A comma is indeed a (binary) message. It concatenates two Collections, like Strings. Please provide more details on how you try to connect and what error you get, exactly. > On 22 Jan 2015, at 08:26, Craig <craig(a)hivemind.net> wrote: > > From: Sven Van Caekenberghe > Sent: 22 January 2015 08:37 AM > >> What exactly do you mean ? >> >> Reading the link above that seems to be correct, at first glance, >> maybe I > don't see it. > > Sven, > > Forgive me, I'm new to Pharo, but I'm sure that in Pharo you don't use > commas to separate parameters in a message. I don't know of any > syntactical significance of the comma. > I saw this after I got the ", does not understand connectionArgs" > message when trying to connect to my Postgres database. I take this > to mean that Pharo tried to send the connectionArgs message to the ',' > ByteString. > > Craig > >

Jan. 22, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] The Smalltalk Report issue

by stepharo

currently uploading ST issues at http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/TheSmalltalkReport/ grab them when they will be available :) We should put them on torrents Stef Le 22/1/15 00:52, Rafael Luque a Ã©crit : > Hi Pharoers, > > I'm looking for The Smalltalk Report volume 6 issue 4 (1997) because > I'd like to read the first article mentioning refactoring by Kent > Beck: "Make it run, Make it right: Desing through Refactoring" > published in this number. > > I've found the following archive from 1991 to 1996: > http://www.macqueen.us/stIndex.html > > Anyone know where can I found this old issue or at least the article? > > Thank you.

Jan. 22, 2015