Re: The Greatest Contributors to Smalltalk since 1980
 I forgot to mention in my answer - this should in no way detract from the visions of other projects some of which Iâm less familiar with - Squeak, Cuis, GT, SqueakJS, Livey, Caffeine⦠Iâm in awe of all of them⦠And I think thatâs my point - itâs the communities and the work they do to promote a live, simple, fun and feature rich coding experience that we should all celebrate. Tim
On 25 Jul 2021, at 16:30, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:  Isnât this the wrong question to ask? Iâm assuming this is to do with Smalltalkâs 50th anniversary, and of course we are grateful to those early pioneers who did lots of work in the field 20-30 years ago but to me thatâs the old history and while itâs interesting to call out, it doesnât shed life on the day to day energy we have today - whst keeps Smalltalk alive and current.
Iâd like to nominate the Pharo community - being brave enough to fork when it was felt that doing something different was interesting enough to take the flack for it. But more than this, so many people have continued to contribute - teach, fix, pioneer etc. Particularly when there are so many other languages and movements you can follow - continuing the vision of a simple, malleable system that everyone can understand and fix is commendable.
If you really want a name - Iâd say Stephan Ducasse and Marcus Denker - I heard them stand up at Esug 2007 (Lugano) and really call out a vision for a malleable environment that was Smalltalk inspired but would let them properly experiment with new language ideas (I recall in particular the reference to reified inst var slots to let them manipulate programs more easily when experimenting). This was possibly the foreshadow to Pharo, and it took about 10 years of incremental improvements to achieve that exciting 2007 vision that I recall painted at the time. It certainly didnât happen in a day , and itâs still happening now as we read this, and the job is still not done.
But in a way Iâm kind of reluctant to name, names as so many people have piled in around that community vision to make something that will continue to live and experiment. But to Stephan/Marcus and everyone else - hats off to you for creating something that is fun and productive to use, but more importantly is inspiring enough to contribute to.
Tim
On 25 Jul 2021, at 11:00, Clacton Server <david@totallyobjects.com> wrote: Eric Clayberg - John OâKeefe??
On 25 Jul 2021, at 09:33, Richard Sargent <rsargent@5x5.on.ca> wrote:
Dave Thomas of OTI probably ranks in your list.
On July 24, 2021 3:44:40 PM PDT, horrido.hobbies@gmail.com wrote:
Iâm looking for a list of individuals who have contributed greatly to the advancement of Smalltalk, post Xerox PARC period (1972-1980). By advancement, I donât only mean on a technical basis but on an educational or public awareness basis (this could include books, podcasts, talk circuit, video instruction, etc.). Any basis that has made Smalltalk a success in the marketplace (including commercialization).
I posted this question on LinkedIn and got one useful response: the late James Robertson.
My personal nomination is Kent Beck.
Iâm not that familiar with the deep history of Smalltalk, so Iâm looking for more nominations.
Thanks.
Thanks to everyone for some great suggestions. Iâm coming around to the notion that I asked the wrong question. In the context of Smalltalkâs 50th anniversary, the reason I asked the question is because I noted that in APLâs 50th anniversary celebration, they gave an award to the one individual who was deemed the greatest contributor to APL. So I thought I might do the same for Smalltalk. But now, Iâm seeing that was somewhat wrongheaded. Yes, it is the community that made Smalltalk what it was, and what it is today. Singling out one individual seems unfair, and rather arbitrary. Maybe Iâll conduct a poll with these suggestions and let the Smalltalk community express their support with their votes. That may even provide some insight.
Tudor Girba and his colleagues at feenk need to be recognized, too. In many respects, they have pushed Smalltalk to do things that, I think, the original designers would have heartily endorsed. On Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 18:44 <horrido.hobbies@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks to everyone for some great suggestions.
Iâm coming around to the notion that I asked the wrong question. In the context of Smalltalkâs 50th anniversary, the reason I asked the question is because I noted that in APLâs 50th anniversary celebration, they gave an award to the one individual who was deemed the greatest contributor to APL. So I thought I might do the same for Smalltalk.
But now, Iâm seeing that was somewhat wrongheaded. Yes, it is the community that made Smalltalk what it was, and what it is today. Singling out one individual seems unfair, and rather arbitrary.
Maybe Iâll conduct a poll with these suggestions and let the Smalltalk community express their support with their votes. That may even provide some insight.
I guess I agree on the question being wrong. There are quiet a few people I think did incredibly important things, not only to Smalltalk. What about the people behind the Refactoring Browser (John Brant? and I guess a few less prominent people who did some of the groundwork), for example? Seaside has been mentioned already, but there are other milestones, like TOPLink or Glorp (Alan Knight and his ex-colleagues). Then there are people who did a lot of ground work that tends to be unseen. Niall Ross has been working in SUnit, RB, Rewriet Tool and Glorp literally for decades without getting any laurels because he "only" carried these milestones forward and kept them working. And there are quite a few people who did amazing things that we tend to forget about. The success of Smalltalk (and even if we are not mainstream, our language has survived for 50 years and will not go anywhere soon, some hyped technologies won't even make 10, not to think of 20 years) is based on the work of so many people. What about Vanessa Freudenberg, The whole Squeak and EToys community, OpenQwaq and scratch? OLPC? What about the authors of the Design Patterns Smalltalk Companion? James Robertson's Podcast was wonderful and I miss it a lot. But he had people on the podcast who also made it a joyful experience: Willow Lucas-Smith and David Buck come to mind. Anybody remember how much energy Randal Schwartz once put into Smalltalk marketing? I have only been in the Smalltalk world for the last 26 years, and everybody I am mentioning here has been working on the foundation that has been built for them a long time before that. Rebecca Wirfs-Brock? Martin Fowler? Eric Clayberg? Joseph Pelrine are just a few names that immediately com to my mind. And I am sure I am forgetting more important names or even never heard of them. We are standing on the shoulders of Giants. Some may even not be aware of what they did. Partly because they have moved on to other languages and communities. Likas Renggli, Julian Fitzell, Vassily Bykov, Michel Bany, Martin Kobetic, many of the Eclipse guys. The list is just too long. Joachim Am 26.07.21 um 06:34 schrieb Richard Sargent:
Tudor Girba and his colleagues at feenk need to be recognized, too.
In many respects, they have pushed Smalltalk to do things that, I think, the original designers would have heartily endorsed.
On Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 18:44 <horrido.hobbies@gmail.com <mailto:horrido.hobbies@gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks to everyone for some great suggestions.
Iâm coming around to the notion that I asked the wrong question. In the context of Smalltalkâs 50th anniversary, the reason I asked the question is because I noted that in APLâs 50th anniversary celebration, they gave an award to the one individual who was deemed the greatest contributor to APL. So I thought I might do the same for Smalltalk.
But now, Iâm seeing that was somewhat wrongheaded. Yes, it is the community that made Smalltalk what it was, and what it is today. Singling out one individual seems unfair, and rather arbitrary.
Maybe Iâll conduct a poll with these suggestions and let the Smalltalk community express their support with their votes. That may even provide some insight.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1
Wow! What a trip down memory lane and I learned some I didnât know as well. This thread is inspiring in itself :) And I agree with all those named and that there are many more unnamed!
participants (5)
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horrido.hobbies＠gmail.com -
jtuchel＠objektfabrik.de -
Richard Sargent -
sean＠clipperadams.com -
Tim Mackinnon