@Esteban: Thanks for your balanced answer. got it. But I get back to the point of "silencing/ban" (which is not my suggestion). @Eduardo: Right, sorry, this should have been more clearly (and I did not want to be condescending towards newcomers). Soft skills and people who create articles, tutorials, graphics, fansites, paper archives etc. are most helpful and do earn merit, of course. But that is not what R.K. Eng is doing (after reconsidering, newer articles are a bit less devisive/wrong; his knowledge seems subpar to write docs/tutorials, R.K.Eng is spreading half-truth and marketing slogans from the 1980ies, and experienced devs, who might like Smalltalk, will be pushed off [I have two actual experiences, I get to this, see below]). 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 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. * 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). * 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). 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...
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) Maybe it is a language thing, but "Mr. Smalltalk" is _extremely_ presumptive (in German, it means the embodiement 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 absolutly not).
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 poducing 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.
Many people criticized his early articles (including me) for attacking other languages rather than just promoting the positives of Smalltalk But I think that had an impact. I find his later articles more balanced and I generally like the way his writing matured. right. I stand corrected!
* ...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 informations 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).
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 refering to the "up-coming" Smalltalk Coding Competition. Now, yes, that money doesnt 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. And before he again is pointing to Alan Kay giving some bucks, sure, it would be very unpolite, if the Grand Jedi Master didnt contribute to a fanboys project (my estimation, sorry).
* ...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 percieved 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)
and which audience we should target, they don't need a clueless person telling them to "get into TIOBE index", just for example) Such opinions have no impact on me. Its just an opinion.
right ok.
* is claiming credit for the work others have done, I don't see him claiming he did any work on Pharo codebase, so this is off point.
see above. It is extremly implicit in his appearance, he fosters this impression. (again, see my story)
fostering his own publicity (not the interests of Pharo/VisualWorks etc). Fostering his own publicity has no impact on me. But actually I believe his heart is about fostering Pharo publicity, even if some articles are not written the way I'd write them.
his heart burns for Smalltalk, true. But he is going rogue manytimes, detrimental to the community: publicity _is_ power over a community.
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.
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.
(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 appereance screams for being recogized 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 ligt on Smalltalk, with which he wants to be identified in the web) Thank you!