Hi, I have had a wonderful time in Smalltalks 2015 in Argentina, and for a novice but involved practicioner in this event I don't see a lot of balkanization between communities or internal fights. Most of us attending the event could talk and enjoy each other without any concern about using Gemtalk, Squeak, Cuis, Pharo etc. I share the Steph's claim about not fighting different and worth visions inside the smalltalk community, for me the real difference (or "fight" if you want) is with other visions of what computing could be, most of the inherited from unix paradigm and its development approaches (dead files, separed IDE, balkanized tools, etc). My reading is that different communities of Smalltalk doesn't talk that much in EEUU as in Argentina/Chile or Europe. They're more atomized and without the vitality that came from researchers and students in universities (with maybe small exceptions), so this sense of balkanization is bigger and there is a lot of pressure on being popular (from TV shows of young people being popular in school to discovering the next big thing in startups and technology). I think that to invent the future we need to be released of the popularity narrative and to have strong community ties to explore/build/communicate that future together. Cheers, Offray On 14/11/15 02:40, stepharo wrote:
Thanks this is nice effort.
Now some remarks: - Do you think that great speakers like doru would be invited to prime time conference to talk about a language that is from 1980? - You talk about momentum and shared space. Do you think that it is wise to talk about a Smalltalk whose forum has 5 posts in a year? - We have to create the momentum and we should not look back (it does not mean that we should not know our culture and history) and invent for real the future.
Now do not get me wrong: I do pharo and the battle is not against squeak, cuis or... it is against Javascript, Ruby, Lua, Python. So decide were you put your energy. I chose for mine.
This is my last post on this thread. People not happy with my points can be not happy but I'm right and I will not deviate one inch :).
Stef
PS: working on a teaser about Pharo and its vision
PSPS: my vision
ultimate live environment great reflective system well integrated with C well integrated with OSes wonderful IDE
Le 14/11/15 06:02, EuanM a écrit :
I've created Yet Another Smalltalk First Steps tutorial.
This is intended as one of a series.
It is designed to be cross-platform across
Squeak 5 Pharo 4 Seaside 3.1 Cuis Dolphin 6
If you have experience running any of these systems on Windows, Linux or MacOS, please check to see if I have the instructions correct for your chosen pairing of Smalltalk and OS platform.
(As you'll see when you look, I do not have detailed instructions for aspects of MacOS).
The document is at: http://smalltalkinsmallsteps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/get-smalltalk-up-and-run...
(It's intended to move to a different blog after this review process).
I feel the need to do this as cross-Smalltalks tutorial because of findings and 4 charts I've placed at: http://smalltalkinsmallsteps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/mindshare-of-smalltalk-i...
Essentially, Smalltalk mindshare and use is incredibly tiny, compared to other languages in the same space. (We all know this, but seeing it represented graphically has a more visceral effect, IMO)
Aggregating interest in all the Smalltalks still does not bring more than a tiny proportion of the interest in, and use of, Ruby.
In turn, Ruby is (quite understandably) small in comparison to JavaScript.
Comparing interest in any specific Smalltalk is, predictably, smaller than the aggregate interest in Smalltalk.
Our community seems determined to split itself into smaller and smaller sub-communities. I think we do ourselves a disservice this way.
My initial contribution will be to try to provide some explicitly pan-Smalltalk beginners' tutorials, like this one.
Cheers, and happy Smalltalking, EuanM