I really dislike that video. I mean structurally. The speaker goes establishing an authority figure at the beginning that claims "Smalltalk is dead", and after that it goes one hour telling why that happening and how this can happen to other community/language (Ruby), basically using anecdotes.
I remember seeing the whole thing and thinking: Why is dead? It seems pretty live to me. What is a dead language for Uncle Bob? Unpopularity? Why most of the audience agrees with that? Is there some kind of anglo-centric conception of "live as being popular" (which is what surrounds a lot of TV and movies narrative coming from there) that is escaping to me as an outsider, coming from other culture and with other concerns about why a computing environment and language is meaningful to me? So I search the web looking for the so proclaimed dead of Smalltalk and found better information beyond the aesthetics of that talk (trust this authority and justify it through personal anecdotes) and I found [1]. That gave me a better historical overview of the reasons behind Smalltalk's unpopularity and also contrasted critical points against the exaggerated dead claims. [1] http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead After the initial cultural shock of learning another way of thinking/interaction on/with computers [2], I remember feeling that sense of flow and eloquence in Pharo by experience live coding: I was finally to tell in code what was so difficult to tell in other environments and to prototype ideas that I would like to see elsewhere or in my favorite tools. That' despite of Grafoscopio being my first "real app" ever done in Pharo (I made some small games in Squeak back in 2005 using Etoys and Bots Inc teaching environments). [2] https://twitter.com/offrayLC/status/493979407011561473 So I stop caring about alleged "deadness" and more about fluidly and personal expressivity and mastery, and a set of communities to share that search and look for crosspollination. It has been a joyful interesting path with a lot to do and learn ahead. Cheers, Offray On 08/07/17 18:49, Edward K. Ream wrote: > > > On Sat, Jul 8, 2017 at 6:17 PM, 'Karsten Wolf' via leo-editor > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Disclaimer: This may sound like a rant but it isn't. I got out of > that rabbit hole a decade ago. For me programming in Smalltalk is > dreaming of the ideal software and programming in Python is > Getting things done. > > > Thanks for this perspective! It's easy to get carried away by grand > ideas. Perhaps they will bear fruit with Leo on Python. > > Edward > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "leo-editor" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
