@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!

...

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* ...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)

...

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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.

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* 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)

...

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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 – 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!

Hey Ben, I leave it with this answer, as you suggested, thank you for picking up the ball! First, I admit again, I have thought about it one whole day, if and how I should do this "intervention", which is absolutly not my usual style, but I decided for myself, to be intentionally blunt, provocative, and parade his virtual presence around here in front of all Pharo users... In the hope that this kicks off something and, of course, that it will not be the final word. I tried to avoid being seen as the hurt one (seems, that I did not quite succeed with this). Javascript is most popular, so R.K. Eng cannot damage this platform with his – let's say... – "opinions", but he can damage Smalltalk and its small community. So I started with making noise, not with the story from my client's managers, who dismissed Pharo, because of his highly ranked Google search results – last year (But in fact, I was annoyed two days ago, I was googling actually a very specific topic about compiler optimization in prototype-based OO, and R.K. Engs ill-informed superficial "lecturing" rants showed up again at third or fourth place, I think, sigh). Short answers to your questions: * Yep, one main concern is his connection between Smalltalk advocacy and discrediting other languages – or making dogmatic, condescending and un-empirical statements of strong typing over weak typing, or class-based over prototype-based OO etc. Just separate that clearly. JS has huge momentum (IMHO absolutly justified), and it would be advisable to say something like "Hey, you like JS? Then look at ST, it is similar but the 'original thing', more pure, and takes the basic concepts even further". * I have to correct myself concerning "wrong statements about ST": it is not so much, that he writes "wrong" things about Pharo, but it is more that R.K.Eng often uses old 1980ies marketing language (like "It is just objects all the way down!"). That was nice back then, a completely new way of thinking, but today, a whole bunch of languages has sprung up from this legacy (dynamic, OO, introspection etc.), among them JS, and have taken the concepts to new forms. His superficial knowledge combined with the over-confident and condescending attitude scares away interested people. The quote I mentioned ("just object all the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?" etc). * Pushing ones own projects is fine, again. But all his publicity effort have a strong taste (maybe it is cultural), that he wants control public perception of the community (and thus steering it). Being "Mr. Smalltalk" is extremly presumptive, in German it would usually refer to an official spokesperson (I think actually, for native English speakers, too...). And if I remember correctly, he did not get a warm welcome, true, but before that, he showed up without any Smalltalk background and just proclaimed himself the new project/marketing manager, without ever asking, what the community actually needs and what the current state is. * The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS project... * If a person constantly and loudly points out that he is "altruistic", and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in part) would be worth a lot of money, than this is the opposite of altruistic... Again, maybe a cultural thing. But yes, I like to see becoming this a success story. Thank you! M Am Fr, 1. Mär, 2019 um 6:15 NACHMITTAGS schrieb Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com>:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your thoughtful followup.

On Fri, 1 Mar 2019 at 19:59, Michael Zeder <post@michael-j-zeder.de> 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.

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...

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.

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...

...

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.

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...

...

(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 – 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

On 2019-04-09 1:17 p.m., horrido wrote:

BTW, I've also said many unkind things about Python. And C++. And Scala and Swift. But I'm being criticized for what I've said about JavaScript? Really???

There is certainly no hint of bias here.

Richard, you keep doing what you're doing; that guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

The quote I mentioned ("just object all the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?"

It's not your fault neither he nor his manager have any idea what objects all the way down means and that he thinks JS and a whole bunch of other languages have done this just shows he still has no idea what objects all the way down means. These easily offended people and their entitlement to think they can tell you what you should or shouldn't say about a language you like can be dealt with by telling them to go fuck themselves. I've liked your articles, and JavaScript is a shitty language no matter how many newbs pick it up; popularity doesn't mean quality. -- Ramon Leon

Just to prove that I'm a very reasonable person, I make this unconditional offer... If Michael can identify which of my JavaScript and Python articles are in error and point out the specific falsehoods, I will correct them. I presume that not ALL of my criticisms are unjustified. This should assuage any concerns that JavaScript and Python developers who read my articles are mislead and think I don't know what I'm talking about. I trust this will prevent Smalltalk (and Pharo) from being placed in a bad light. See? I can be very accommodating. I look forward to the suggested amendments. horrido wrote

BTW, I've also said many unkind things about Python. And C++. And Scala and Swift. But I'm being criticized for what I've said about JavaScript? Really???

There is certainly no hint of bias here.

Michael J. Zeder wrote

...

Hey Ben,

I leave it with this answer, as you suggested, thank you for picking up the ball! First, I admit again, I have thought about it one whole day, if and how I should do this "intervention", which is absolutly not my usual style, but I decided for myself, to be intentionally blunt, provocative, and parade his virtual presence around here in front of all Pharo users... In the hope that this kicks off something and, of course, that it will not be the final word.

I tried to avoid being seen as the hurt one (seems, that I did not quite succeed with this). Javascript is most popular, so R.K. Eng cannot damage this platform with his – let's say... – "opinions", but he can damage Smalltalk and its small community. So I started with making noise, not with the story from my client's managers, who dismissed Pharo, because of his highly ranked Google search results – last year (But in fact, I was annoyed two days ago, I was googling actually a very specific topic about compiler optimization in prototype-based OO, and R.K. Engs ill-informed superficial "lecturing" rants showed up again at third or fourth place, I think, sigh).

Short answers to your questions:

* Yep, one main concern is his connection between Smalltalk advocacy and discrediting other languages – or making dogmatic, condescending and un-empirical statements of strong typing over weak typing, or class-based over prototype-based OO etc. Just separate that clearly. JS has huge momentum (IMHO absolutly justified), and it would be advisable to say something like "Hey, you like JS? Then look at ST, it is similar but the 'original thing', more pure, and takes the basic concepts even further".

* I have to correct myself concerning "wrong statements about ST": it is not so much, that he writes "wrong" things about Pharo, but it is more that R.K.Eng often uses old 1980ies marketing language (like "It is just objects all the way down!"). That was nice back then, a completely new way of thinking, but today, a whole bunch of languages has sprung up from this legacy (dynamic, OO, introspection etc.), among them JS, and have taken the concepts to new forms. His superficial knowledge combined with the over-confident and condescending attitude scares away interested people. The quote I mentioned ("just object all the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?" etc).

* Pushing ones own projects is fine, again. But all his publicity effort have a strong taste (maybe it is cultural), that he wants control public perception of the community (and thus steering it). Being "Mr. Smalltalk" is extremly presumptive, in German it would usually refer to an official spokesperson (I think actually, for native English speakers, too...). And if I remember correctly, he did not get a warm welcome, true, but before that, he showed up without any Smalltalk background and just proclaimed himself the new project/marketing manager, without ever asking, what the community actually needs and what the current state is.

* The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS project...

* If a person constantly and loudly points out that he is "altruistic", and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in part) would be worth a lot of money, than this is the opposite of altruistic... Again, maybe a cultural thing.

But yes, I like to see becoming this a success story. Thank you! M

Am Fr, 1. Mär, 2019 um 6:15 NACHMITTAGS schrieb Ben Coman <

...

btc@

...

>:

...

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 – 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

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

+1 /*—————————————————-*/ Sent from my iPhone https://boincstats.com/signature/-1/user/51616339056/sig.png See https://objectnets.net and https://objectnets.org

On Apr 10, 2019, at 12:38, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:

How about we just move on? I don’t see much usefulness in arguing over older stuff - I’m sure you/we/them will have different opinions on levels of incorrectness - honestly it’s not worth it.

I think you’ve defended your corner fine , but I would much prefer that everyone focuses on the merits of their respective languages/approaches - I’m more interested seeing energy invested in the next cool things in all languages. I’m also keen for us also finishing off the bits we still in progress. And I hope we can constructively share ideas ...

Sent from my iPhone

...

On 10 Apr 2019, at 19:25, horrido <horrido.hobbies@gmail.com> wrote:

Just to prove that I'm a very reasonable person, I make this unconditional offer...

If Michael can identify which of my JavaScript and Python articles are in error and point out the specific falsehoods, I will correct them. I presume that not ALL of my criticisms are unjustified.

This should assuage any concerns that JavaScript and Python developers who read my articles are mislead and think I don't know what I'm talking about. I trust this will prevent Smalltalk (and Pharo) from being placed in a bad light.

See? I can be very accommodating. I look forward to the suggested amendments.

horrido wrote

...

BTW, I've also said many unkind things about Python. And C++. And Scala and Swift. But I'm being criticized for what I've said about JavaScript? Really???

There is certainly no hint of bias here.

Michael J. Zeder wrote

...

Hey Ben,

I leave it with this answer, as you suggested, thank you for picking up the ball! First, I admit again, I have thought about it one whole day, if and how I should do this "intervention", which is absolutly not my usual style, but I decided for myself, to be intentionally blunt, provocative, and parade his virtual presence around here in front of all Pharo users... In the hope that this kicks off something and, of course, that it will not be the final word.

I tried to avoid being seen as the hurt one (seems, that I did not quite succeed with this). Javascript is most popular, so R.K. Eng cannot damage this platform with his – let's say... – "opinions", but he can damage Smalltalk and its small community. So I started with making noise, not with the story from my client's managers, who dismissed Pharo, because of his highly ranked Google search results – last year (But in fact, I was annoyed two days ago, I was googling actually a very specific topic about compiler optimization in prototype-based OO, and R.K. Engs ill-informed superficial "lecturing" rants showed up again at third or fourth place, I think, sigh).

Short answers to your questions:

* Yep, one main concern is his connection between Smalltalk advocacy and discrediting other languages – or making dogmatic, condescending and un-empirical statements of strong typing over weak typing, or class-based over prototype-based OO etc. Just separate that clearly. JS has huge momentum (IMHO absolutly justified), and it would be advisable to say something like "Hey, you like JS? Then look at ST, it is similar but the 'original thing', more pure, and takes the basic concepts even further".

* I have to correct myself concerning "wrong statements about ST": it is not so much, that he writes "wrong" things about Pharo, but it is more that R.K.Eng often uses old 1980ies marketing language (like "It is just objects all the way down!"). That was nice back then, a completely new way of thinking, but today, a whole bunch of languages has sprung up from this legacy (dynamic, OO, introspection etc.), among them JS, and have taken the concepts to new forms. His superficial knowledge combined with the over-confident and condescending attitude scares away interested people. The quote I mentioned ("just object all the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?" etc).

* Pushing ones own projects is fine, again. But all his publicity effort have a strong taste (maybe it is cultural), that he wants control public perception of the community (and thus steering it). Being "Mr. Smalltalk" is extremly presumptive, in German it would usually refer to an official spokesperson (I think actually, for native English speakers, too...). And if I remember correctly, he did not get a warm welcome, true, but before that, he showed up without any Smalltalk background and just proclaimed himself the new project/marketing manager, without ever asking, what the community actually needs and what the current state is.

* The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS project...

* If a person constantly and loudly points out that he is "altruistic", and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in part) would be worth a lot of money, than this is the opposite of altruistic... Again, maybe a cultural thing.

But yes, I like to see becoming this a success story. Thank you! M

Am Fr, 1. Mär, 2019 um 6:15 NACHMITTAGS schrieb Ben Coman <

...

btc@

...

>:

...

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 – 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

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

Thanks guys - I think some useful clarifications came out of this - and I hope it doesn’t dent anyone’s enthusiasm to spreading the good word about all useful technology and approaches.

On 11 Apr 2019, at 08:28, Michael Zeder <post@michael-j-zeder.de> wrote:

...

How about we just move on?

Thanks. I have responded in private to persons who asked for it, to not further flood the list.

To close this thread, I feel it may be necessary to say something conciliatory: So, apology to Richard for being rude and loud. I was pushing for reactions, and since you sought the lime light yourself, I was particularly harsh.

...

... everyone focuses on the merits of their respective languages/approaches - I´m more interested seeing energy invested in the next cool things in all languages. I´m also keen for us also finishing off the bits we still in progress. And I hope we can constructively share ideas ...

Fully agreed. I stand by my points, public appearance of a community is a concern. A seclusive "obscure" small niche language which makes a "silly" picture in web searches and bashes and lashes out on big languages (for good/bad reasons) is not appealing and does not market itself well. (Since a criticized again, apology again for the tone)

As a point of honour, there are statements here that I cannot leave unchallenged. "but before that, he showed up without any Smalltalk background..." This is an unacceptable smear. Without any Smalltalk background? In 2007, I wrote a Seaside application in Squeak for a psychiatrist acquaintance of mind. This was no trivial task. More recently, I published a Raspberry Pi programming tutorial in Pharo. I also wrote the Teapot application for my competition website (teams.jrmpc.ca). So I have /some/ Smalltalk background, at least. I am certainly not talking out of my ass. "and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in part) would be worth a lot of money..." First of all, why do I need to be /asked/? Was Blake Watson asked to write this article <https://smartbear.com/blog/develop/todays-smalltalk-a-second-look-at-the-fir...> in 2012? How many people have published Smalltalk articles without being asked? The only difference is that I've published hundreds of articles. So sue me for being prolific. Second, I've never made a dime out of this. All the money I've ever collected was for JRMPC, and I'm putting it to good use. Whatever is left over, I will continue to apply to future marketing efforts. The idea that I'm making money out of this is ludicrous. A few thousand dollars for four years of hard work is nobody's idea of fair compensation. There are easier ways for me to make money! This is clearly altruistic work. "The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS project..." This is not my fault. I can't control SEO. I wish I could control how my name appears in Google search – it would be invaluable. To complain about this is totally unfair to me. What am I supposed to do? Not publish hundreds of articles? Not write thousands of answers at Quora? Not go on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn? Michael J. Zeder wrote

Hey Ben,

I leave it with this answer, as you suggested, thank you for picking up the ball! First, I admit again, I have thought about it one whole day, if and how I should do this "intervention", which is absolutly not my usual style, but I decided for myself, to be intentionally blunt, provocative, and parade his virtual presence around here in front of all Pharo users... In the hope that this kicks off something and, of course, that it will not be the final word.

I tried to avoid being seen as the hurt one (seems, that I did not quite succeed with this). Javascript is most popular, so R.K. Eng cannot damage this platform with his – let's say... – "opinions", but he can damage Smalltalk and its small community. So I started with making noise, not with the story from my client's managers, who dismissed Pharo, because of his highly ranked Google search results – last year (But in fact, I was annoyed two days ago, I was googling actually a very specific topic about compiler optimization in prototype-based OO, and R.K. Engs ill-informed superficial "lecturing" rants showed up again at third or fourth place, I think, sigh).

Short answers to your questions:

* Yep, one main concern is his connection between Smalltalk advocacy and discrediting other languages – or making dogmatic, condescending and un-empirical statements of strong typing over weak typing, or class-based over prototype-based OO etc. Just separate that clearly. JS has huge momentum (IMHO absolutly justified), and it would be advisable to say something like "Hey, you like JS? Then look at ST, it is similar but the 'original thing', more pure, and takes the basic concepts even further".

* I have to correct myself concerning "wrong statements about ST": it is not so much, that he writes "wrong" things about Pharo, but it is more that R.K.Eng often uses old 1980ies marketing language (like "It is just objects all the way down!"). That was nice back then, a completely new way of thinking, but today, a whole bunch of languages has sprung up from this legacy (dynamic, OO, introspection etc.), among them JS, and have taken the concepts to new forms. His superficial knowledge combined with the over-confident and condescending attitude scares away interested people. The quote I mentioned ("just object all the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?" etc).

* Pushing ones own projects is fine, again. But all his publicity effort have a strong taste (maybe it is cultural), that he wants control public perception of the community (and thus steering it). Being "Mr. Smalltalk" is extremly presumptive, in German it would usually refer to an official spokesperson (I think actually, for native English speakers, too...). And if I remember correctly, he did not get a warm welcome, true, but before that, he showed up without any Smalltalk background and just proclaimed himself the new project/marketing manager, without ever asking, what the community actually needs and what the current state is.

* The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS project...

* If a person constantly and loudly points out that he is "altruistic", and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in part) would be worth a lot of money, than this is the opposite of altruistic... Again, maybe a cultural thing.

But yes, I like to see becoming this a success story. Thank you! M

Am Fr, 1. Mär, 2019 um 6:15 NACHMITTAGS schrieb Ben Coman <

btc@

>:

...

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 – 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

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

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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

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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 – 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