On 14 April 2018 at 22:15, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:

Sven Van Caekenberghe-2 wrote
> Thanks Jochen, thanks everyone.

Great report! Thanks, Sven :) I was thinking in the same direction - that my
posts always seem to focus on our work moving forward, and I rarely take the
time to do a nice writeup of successful applications like these, of which
I've had many.

I was also thinking that many of the recent animated discussions are signs
of health in our community

I recently came across an interesting hypothesis...

�� "There are two types of programming languages.��

�� Those that people complain about, and those that people don't use."

Is it��masochistic to hope we are moving towards the former?

��

because:��

a) They seem to often involve people that are not regular posters to the
list, signaling a potential widening of buy-in

While there is likely a growing need to guard against trolls,��

consider that newcomers may commit limited time to posting,

be hurting and lash out,��and with fresh eyes, may be poking us where it hurts.

For us, don't take it personally.�� If we focus our response on��

the technical aspects, we lead the discussion where we want it to go.

The easiest thing for a Pharo newcomer to do when experiencing problems��

is to just drop it and move on to something else.

That they put in the effort to articulate their issues is a good thing,

and are the seeds of a contributor concerned with making Pharo better.

For newcomers, remember that many people have invested a lot of��

volunteer effort into Pharo and is something dear to our hearts.��

We love specific *constructive* feedback that helps us make Pharo better,

but broad complaints only detract with little benefit.

cheers -ben

P.S. Years ago, this article was influential to me... http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

��

b) While our community values constructive feedback (even if it's very
direct), it also fiercely protects people who have given us a lot (as
evidenced by the overwhelming response to a recent trolling on another ML)
c) Maybe most important: they are often about code and infrastructure that
didn't even *exist* a few years ago. For example, now we complain about
breaking builds; I'm sure we all remember not long ago when there was *no*
CI at all to complain about! It seems amazing that the system is as stable
as it is considering everything we overhauled/invented, including: streams,
http, file system, browser (2x), git support, FFI, changes, catalog, the
compiler, GT��

For myself, I am clear that any instability is a small price to pay for the
power and hope that Pharo offers. Every time I drop out of our live, direct,
turetles-all-the-way down into a Ruby script, command line, or configuration
file, this is proven again.

All we have to do is hang on! It is a well known principle that it often
seem most difficult just before success and the difference is who quits and
who doesn't :)

-----
Cheers,
Sean
--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html