Hi Rich, I agree totally with you! Lorenzo -----Messaggio originale----- Da: Pharo-users [mailto:pharo-users-bounces@lists.pharo.org] Per conto di horrido Inviato: martedì 9 aprile 2019 19:07 A: pharo-users@lists.pharo.org Oggetto: Re: [Pharo-users] Richard Kenneth Eng is NOT Mr. Smalltalk I just accidentally came across this thread. I feel I have to provide some clarifications... First of all, the sobriquet "Mr. Smalltalk" started way back in October of 2016 with this article <https://medium.com/@richardeng/domo-arigato-mr-smalltalk-aa84e245beb9> . It was meant as a marketing gimmick to take advantage of the popularity of the Mr. Robot television series. I figured it would be a good way to attract attention. After all, /that's what marketing is all about/. I had no intention of making this an egotistical thing. I don't care to be a representative of the Smalltalk community. My one and only priority is to market Smalltalk any way I can, something that I made perfectly clear in the article and something that I have adhered to unwaveringly over the past several years. Second, I have never denigrated the contributions of the Smalltalk community. I applaud their efforts. However, I feel I must remain true to my mission: to market Smalltalk (and Pharo). People may disagree with my marketing strategy. That's fine. I cannot make everybody happy. But let's be very clear: many people also *agree* with my marketing strategy. So, who should I listen to? The answer is: nobody. On what basis would I allow others to influence my strategy? There is no central governing body for Smalltalk in all of its various incarnations (Pharo, Squeak, GNU Smalltalk, Dolphin Smalltalk, Cuis Smalltalk, VisualWorks, VA Smalltalk, GemStone/S, etc.). Trying to obtain consensus among such a broad range of communities would be pure folly. Third, I am entitled to my opinions, just as everyone else in this world is. My opinion is that Smalltalk (and Pharo) is a great language that deserves better marketing. There are some who disagree with me. Many people have told me that Smalltalk is moribund and way past its due date. I accept disagreement, but I don't have to let it stop me. My opinion is that JavaScript is a shit language. There are some who disagree with me. I accept disagreement, but I don't have to let it stop me. Michael Zeder is clearly a JavaScript fan. However, I can tell you that at Quora, where I often express my opinions about JavaScript, tens of thousands have upvoted my answers. In other words, there is tremendous support for my position. Again, who should I listen to? Let's be very clear about this: Only a JavaScript fan would be turned off by my opinions. JavaScript critics love me for them. It seems to me that Mr. Zeder's criticism of me is based almost entirely on the fact that he greatly admires JavaScript. Is that fair? Fourth, the culmination of my marketing campaign is JRMPC <https://jrmpc.ca> . After this, I'm done. Support for JRMPC has been quite positive. This was very clear at the Salta conference last November <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888> . Vance Kershner of LabWare was impressed enough by my campaign to support me. At GoFundMe, none other than Alan Kay and Kent Beck also supported me. Alan Kay and Kent Beck!!!!! Whoa, that just blew my mind! So you know what? I don't feel I need to apologize for my efforts. I'm not seeking gratitude (though it would be nice to receive some). Finally, let me say, I'm not happy with my name showing up in SEO all over the place, either. I have never wanted to be the centre of attention. I wanted Smalltalk (and Pharo) to be in the limelight. But what I can do? That's the price I have to pay for marketing Smalltalk aggressively. I leave you with this Oscar Wilde quote: "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Hopefully, people are talking about Smalltalk. Ben Coman wrote
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your thoughtful followup.
On Fri, 1 Mar 2019 at 19:59, Michael Zeder <
post@
> wrote:
I have carefully thought about, if I should really go publicly against one person within the community, and to start this "tirade", including the possibility that this causes an escalation, of course you cannot/must not silence a person ("Streisand" effect, did not know the term, but very fitting). But I decided that this kind of public conflicts is what is needed (and will make the community look better, not worse), _if_ a certain point is reached.
I certainly subscribe to the tenet "Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, in public." [1] And I understand the tension in deciding to do so, with the accompanying risk of making things worse (been there myself) For me what weakened your first post was the name calling and sense you were coming from a position of hurt with a story you needed to justify by "making him wrong". :) Much better second time round.
[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losing
I stand by it, but have reconsidered some points: * I do (did) not call for _immediate_ exclusion, but an "admonishment" that if certain behaviour is not about to change fundamentally, the community will have to act (by publicly separating this individual out).
* Take older articles down, which start flamewars against other languages,
or more precise: separate them from Smalltalk advocacy! If he wants to flame JS (for its various birth defects), fine, but don't connect that with pro-Smalltalk articles, for example.
That seems a reasonable position and a good way to frame it.
* Community efforts shall follow follow some community consensus. Core developers are no dictators, of course, but they are the ones knowing, what the state of the project is, and where _their_ work will lead to. Constantly ignoring this common guidance is detrimental to the community. So either, learn Smalltalk core coding and challenge the leadership, or do accept that there is some common agenda (and there are lots of open tasks: writing tutorials, documentation, make old scientific research available, linking and connecting showcases).
His earlier articles got hammered and its natural that created a defensive position for him to disconnect from the community leadership. The trick as for everyone is to not carry those forever and try starting anew.
* Public opinion does matter. The fact I mentioned Google SEO was indeed
the starting point for me, to get into or start this flame war. *Here is my story*: Two of my clients (medium-sized enterprises) are classical C++/C# Windows development companies. I advertised Pharo to them for an _internal_ tool (their commerical products won't change to Smalltalk of course, but for their own internal dev tasks, Pharo whould have been a nice fit). When the managers got back to me, *they had googled it, and told me, this thing sounds very dubious ("unseriös"). I enquired, what they had read, and they told me, this "spokesperson" (sic!!!) sounds like a trolling script kid, and they can't employ something which is developed (sic!!!) by such people*. After some explanation, I managed to convince them, that this person is just a lonely person, who showed up out of nowhere, is not involved in the actual work, and just produces himself on the internet. But too late, their impression on Smalltalk was already formed by R.K.Engs "blogs" (in the meantime, they rank on top in Google search result).
You should have led with that !!!! An experience has a lot more power than an opinion.
When I did some research of my own yesterday, and saw again, that R.K. Engs dubious blog entries were listed on top, I decided to take action.
I like to answer to your balanced and thoughtful responses:
You may disagree about *how* he does such work, the actual content, for sure, but that's a feedback better directed to mr. Eng himself.
R.K. Eng has made it clear in the past many many times in uncertain wording, that he is not willing to follow community advice in these matters, if his gut is telling him something different...
Some of that community advice has been delivered fairly confrontation-ally and not really conducive to having someone listen.
Hopefully I've expressed a balanced enough position that this doesn't draw too many responses.
yes, you did. thank you.
I agree "Mr Smalltalk" is quite a presumptive title, but really anyone
following the mail lists soon gets an idea of who are the community merit leaders.
Well, I disagree, based on the experience, I have written down above. The internet is very much about who is in the center of the focus (SEO/social media). Anybody new to Smalltalk will at first glance identify our community with this "spokesperson" (as I have experienced with two people, last year already btw)
Point taken.
Maybe it is a language thing, but "Mr. Smalltalk" is _extremely_
presumptive (in German, it means the embodiment of the denoted thing). If a person is not doing very very thorough reading of ages old mail list discussions or is researching, that this person in fact never committed any code to the repos, then any newcomer will think, this "Mr. Smalltalk" is at least a versed and informed Smalltalk developer (which, given his newbie questions he is absolutely not).
Got it. So apart from fighting directly against his presumption to the title (which seems difficult) would cleaning some other-language-denigration from old articles go some way towards mitigating your concern?
You are right he hasn't committed any code, but I've not actually seen him
claim credit for any code in Pharo, so this point seems off.
true. but as I just wrote, that is what people presume, given his way and manner of producing himself. If he wrote honestly wrote "I am a fanboy, supporter and advocate of Smalltalk...", great! But he claims he worked many many hours without a dime, but worth many dollars, and had "tremendous success" in creating a new Smalltalk wave.
I'm pretty by many-hours-without-a dime he meant his evangelism. If it didn't come across like that, that is probably specific copy-edit feedback that would be useful to him.
* ...is doing SEO to make Google show his own results before FOSS
community or sciences pages.
I think its equally likely that most in our community are too busy coding to try getting articles ranked, so its more lack of effort by most of us. Most of his articles mention Pharo so people end up finding us anyway.
might be true (some criticism to the community agenda..? different topic) The thing is, the wrong information are getting more and more in the focus of the internet, pushing aside the community-driven Pharo sites (or real scientific papers or well-done tutorials).
I've read most of his articles. I don't think he gets much factually wrong about Pharo (and has corrected those when pointed out). It seems your main concern about wrong information is attacks on other languages, which is fair.
Any money he gets for his writing is not anything that concerns me
personally. Those articles are his own effort.
Sorry, misunderstanding! Of course, he may earn with his writing, whatever he gets for it. I was referring to the "up-coming" Smalltalk Coding Competition.
btw, a few weeks ago when Richard asked for help to program the competition, I volunteered. I've criticized some of his articles, and maybe there are other "better" the money could be spent, but I admire he has stuck to his vision and think its a big thing he has taken on. If its going to happen anyway, for me its better to help make it a success than a flop. [Sidebar: I haven't managed to do much on it yet since I'm run ragged on a personal development course until mid-April that includes running a community project of my own... https://www.nanpopcode.fun/]
Now, yes, that money doesn't go into his own pockets (would be criminal fraud), but the thing is, he controls this money.
Who will be the judges? Who will set parameters for the competition?
Transparency?
What is the benefit that goes back into the community? Now, it is fine,
that he is pushing for things like that, but again, he is doing it without synchronising this effort with what is needed by the community.
He got a reasonable number of supporters on GoFundMe (I wasn't one at the time), and I believe the majority of the money comes from a few companies so I expect its really their opinion that counts about how their money is spent.
* ...denies community leadership by merit (Pharo core developers do know,
what they have created and where they want to go in the future,
I don't see him claiming leadership of our community or trying to set our agenda. He just didn't let community criticism of his writing slow him down. All I observed is that several people bit him and he bit back - fairly usual sort of poor communication on both sides (including me).
Well, as written above, the manner of his web appearance is implicitly a claim of community leadership. Not an exclusive one of course, but he wants to be perceived of one of the most important persons in the community (he told so many times, explicitly). And given my experience, read above, this had already a (negative) success with it. And I think he is setting agenda: "Make Smalltalk great/mainstream again" is the baseline, and that is something, only the core dev team and the community as a whole can decide/make happen (I love Smalltalk, but he promises wrong things, so if, just for example, C++/Qt devs or _modern_ JS devs have a first look at Smalltalk with the expectation they could already do the same thing as in their usual platforms, they will be disappointed --> synchronize a marketing agenda with what this great project currently is about, but he is not willing to cooperate with the core dev team)
Fair enough. Since in a couple of months I'll be helping him out, I'll have an opportunity to raise these concerns with him.
Him swearing about a group of Pharo people is good ammunition to bring to
the mail list to support your point, but I also see he was rather provoked. Overall I feel this extract was better left in that small corner of the internet rather than fan flames here.
:) Yeah... no! I think this is really a central point (so I put him in the pillory here with intent). There is something called community/FOSS ethics and structures. He does not show _respect_ towards those people, who did the work, but produces himself, and pushes for things, which the people who devoted their work to this project, told him that it is counter-productive. That is, in the long-run, a very dangerous situation.
I agree, its not great. But he didn't get a warm welcome and some of his early interactions were abrasive. Considering two extremes, you can either be inclusive and hopefully nurture/mold, or exclude and lose any chance at that. Like a lot of things, the path is somewhere in the middle and needs a bit of give and take on both sides.
PS: a side note on Javascript (with lower S). wether you love or hate this
quirky lovechild of Lisp and Self/Smalltalk, telling JS developers they are stupid and that they should abandon powerful Vue.js, for example, in favor of Amber Smalltalk [cudos to Amber devs! great thing!]) is utterly stupid!
Agree. But banning everyone in the world for similar stupidity would leave the internet awfully quiet.
Sure! Again: I am against silencing or banning anybody (and how could you). But if this becomes unbearable, there needs to be a public separation, so he does not drag the project down. People need to speak up against such usurpation.
I appreciate the stand your are taking for the community. I've gained from your share of your workplace experience.
(which in the end are only a self-serving, ego-centric, attention-greedy
campaign to promote "Mr. Smalltalk" himself, a total newbie, who claims credit for the work of others).
Your repeated "claims credit for the work of others" is quite provocative and I haven't noticed this in his writings. Could you provide a link?
See above, maybe it is a cultural thing, but as I told in my experience, all of his appearance screams for being recognized as one of the most important persons in the community (he is condescendingly mocking marketing efforts of the last 40 years, claims that he is the one who will "make smalltalk great again"...)
Yes I am provocative this time, not my normal style (and I admit, I was tripped-out by his provocative blog title "Even people who understand prototypal programming do not like it â an inconvienent truth"; that is dripping off arrogance and ignorance... And sheds a bad light on Smalltalk, with which he wants to be identified in the web)
Got it. Let me ask to park this thread for the moment, because it can be quite distracting if everyone chips in an opinion. I think you've made some fair points and I'll put myself on the line to discuss them with Richard when I start helping him with his competition project.
cheers -ben
-- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html