Hi,
For me the idea of the computer as tool at the service of creative human
spirit and for children from 6 to 100 years, stated by the Smalltalk
creators, mean that we should have a continuum between children,
developers, other adults, elders, build with Smalltalk. Because this is
not possible yet, what we have are several projects like Squeak, Cuis
and Pharo, inspired by Smalltalk and serving different interest and
people. Despite of not being ideal, this is far better that having
"Squeak for children" and non Smalltalk technologies for everything
else. In this way you can choose your Smalltalk inspired/based
environment for you and the people you're (co-)designing for, without
the wars between serving one as precluding the possibility to serving
the others.
Cheers,
Offray
On 07/05/16 12:38, David T. Lewis wrote:
On Fri, May 06, 2016 at 12:02:52PM -0700, Kirk Fraser wrote:
Byte magazine which published the balloon concept for Smalltalk rising
above the ivory tower of a lighthouse guiding the way in a sea of computer
languages is out of business. I think it is time for the Squeak balloon to
be grounded to connect with the reality of why computer languages exist -
to make things easy for application developers.
I hope that you do not truly believe this, that Squeak should exist for the
benefit of application developers. What about the 99.99% of people on the
planet who are not application developers?
After all, it's not as if the application developers of the world aren't
already focusing enough attention on their own self-centered interests,
and it's not as though the world really needs yet another software
productivity tool.
To me that is what makes Squeak special. It is a tool for thinking and
learning, and it is accessible at people with all sorts of interests
and ideas. It is not just for programmers and application developers.
I certainly do not want to discourage anyone from writing useful
applications in Squeak, that would be great. It's just that to me, it
would be really discouraging if Squeak got turned into a "development
tool", and disappointing if people did not see its role as something
more than just another programming language.
Just my personal POV.
Dave
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