"I prefer the Smalltalk environment." so do I
"Sorry, if that would be true then Java or C# would be of extraordinary quality. Smalltalk has been there for more than 30 years and will probably another 30 years. Hypes come and go. Quantity for me seems more like the opposite of quality." True ? Smalltalk cannot even begin to compete with the tools and library support of these two behemoths programming languages. That does not mean Java is not ugly or that some of the complain people have with it are not valid and justified complains but still does not change the fact that because of the size of the community it has produced a lot more top quality libraries and tools than any programming language. The "quantity brings quality" is not just a computer world rule its pretty much the fabric of our cosmos that through failures and bad designs more elegant and beautiful , sophisticate designs emerge. Its something that has been happening for billions of years and I doubt will change any time soon. "Why shouldn't they be able to die? products that can be used by everybody. Alas for your work needs their operating systems get worse with every release. Windows XP and Snow Leopard are being seen as the best versions by some... Nothing lasts forever so you can be sure that Windows and Mac OSX will die some day." Win XP is the crappiest OS I ever used win 7 dances around it , its still old crappy windows but way way better. Yosemite has its share of issues but for me so far with the excepetion of problematic CUDAS drivers, had no issues at all with it. I use also UBUNTU 14.04 it offers better support for my system and works like a charm. I seriously dont see this "OS get worse thing". Will one day those OS die ? sure but I doubt I will be alive so there is no reason for me to worry about it. "That's also possible in capitalism: you can ask very high prices so most people and companies cannot (or will not) be able to affort it" I am not going to debate capitalism and its problems, of course I agree that huge companies care only about making money and not for the well being of the consumers. This is why I am here , this is why I support open source and this is why I support Pharo but I cant just turn zealot and refuse the usefulness and expertise of much commercial software out there. All I said is that if there is demand there is going to be supply. Everybody wants to make money and this is why when and if a software dies it gets replaced by something else often better alternative. "For me Smalltalk is a system and not a simple language with some arbitrary tools that can be replaced easily." Its not as hard as you may think to kinda emulate Smalltalk with other programming languages. Actually Pharo has some fierce competition out there as languages are more and more interested into live coding and creating an enviroment for the developer. Smalltalk still has the edge on this because it had an early start but if the example of Swift is any indication its definetly a lesson that languages have not any issue catching up with the Smalltalk world. The question is not if but when other languages come side by side with the abilities of Pharo how you keep pharo developers with pharo ? I think the only answer is by making sure Pharo remains fresh , modern and in sync with modern technology. Git is just a small part of the equation. On the other hand you need also , what Pharo already does to a great extend, innovation to bring new more developers. So I think the right balance is "give something new but also allow me to use my old familiar tools". I am very glad that people behind Pharo realise and materialse this balance. On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 9:46 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo <[email protected]> wrote: > >> My comment was not about discussing the pros and cons of closed versus >> open source software. My concerns are more about reliability. >> For me it's totally Ok to use git for versioning IF the tools are there. >> Squak and Pharo have decent versioning systems that suit their internal >> needs. There is room for improvements, that's for sure. >> For me Smalltalk is a system and not a simple language with some >> arbitrary tools that can be replaced easily. >> >> > The problem is whether the tools you choose for "commoditized" tasks (e.g. > SCM) limit the amount of manpower that could contribute to your open > source project. > > Forks and pull-requests are the way most open source projects fix bugs and > integrates enhancements. You can't do branching with current tooling (read: > Monticello) without suffering proportional to its complexity. > > No one said tools can be replaced easily, and that's the reason we still > use Monticello, some of us backed by old mcz files, others already using > some git behind it. > > Regards, > > > >
