>From "The City on the Edge of Forever": KIRK: Then what is it? GUARDIAN: *A question.* Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question. KIRK: What are you? GUARDIAN: I am the Guardian of Forever. KIRK: Are you machine or being? GUARDIAN: I am both and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending.
----- Clearly, I need to explain myself in greater detail... The efforts of organizations such as STIC and ESUG are laudable. Nevertheless, they have failed to popularize Smalltalk. Today, *Smalltalk is a largely forgotten language*. This can be seen at the TIOBE index where Smalltalk has literally fallen off a cliff (it used to be on the top 100 list, but has since disappeared). At Redmonk and langpop.corger.nl, Smalltalk is somewhere around the 65th position! Smalltalk does not get much developer attention. It doesn't get talked about in the press like Dart and JavaScript and Java do. The language is almost never on the minds of CEOs and CTOs, the business decision makers. I believe I know why. Smalltalk organizations have focussed too much on /technical merit/, and not enough on PR and marketing. Understandable, since engineers are /technically-minded/ and not so much into human behaviour. I think we need to treat developers and businessmen like consumers. We need to sell Smalltalk to them in the same way we sell iPhones and PlayStations. In other words, we need to build /hype/. Let's face it: at the best of times, the subject of Smalltalk is rather staid. STIC and ESUG and the Smalltalk Foundation are not likely to change this. *I want Smalltalk Renaissance to change this.* The Smalltalk Renaissance Program is a highly focussed campaign. Like the language itself, I want to Keep It Simple. (That's why I'm trying to keep the website clean and free of excess baggage.) The SRP cannot succeed without /your/ involvement, your participation. I am not much more than the curator and editor for Smalltalk Renaissance, although I'm also formulating the short-term and long-term strategy. (You can call me "Generalissimo" Eng. ;-) ) One of the things I intend to do is ask members of the Smalltalk community to submit /fresh/ essays and articles on Smalltalk. I have a list of essay topics prepared, carefully chosen for their relevance and impact on the future of Smalltalk. I shall be asking people to pick a topic and run with it. If there are multiple submissions for a particular topic, I shall choose the best one, edit it, and post it on Smalltalk Renaissance. *I guarantee you will look good!* Make no mistake, this is a critical step. *These essays will address the concerns of non-Smalltalk developers.* You need to make compelling arguments. Then we promote these articles and essays on Reddit and Hacker News and so on. In the near future, I will also submit Smalltalk articles to the IT press, such as Wired and InfoWorld. These articles may well benefit from /your contributions/. Another important piece of the strategy is to obtain corporate sponsorship. If not for Apple, the Swift language would never have gotten so much mindshare. If not for Google, Go would've failed to gain a significant following. If not for Microsoft, C# would've been forgotten. In today's highly competitive programming language field, if you don't have a big name backer, you're already behind the eight ball. Grass roots are unlikely to succeed. Getting the imprimatur of a major technology company is a PR coup of inestimable value. But it's also vital for another reason. In the longer term, I want to launch software projects that improve on the Smalltalk technology. Projects such as extending the tooling around the Smalltalk environment (which has been criticized for not playing well with existing file-based tooling). Projects such as improving interoperability with existing (Windows-based) infrastructures in the enterprise (which has been a source of criticism from the likes of Robert Martin). These projects must be financed because open source volunteerism isn't enough, not by a long shot. And this is why we need corporate sponsorship. Before I make a pitch to a CEO, Smalltalk Renaissance must achieve some degree of legitimacy. It can do this by signing up well-known names from the Smalltalk community. Names such as the late James Robertson or Stéphane Ducasse. I already have a draft letter prepared for an important CEO. I'm only waiting for a list of SRP signatories before firing off the letter. (Hint, hint.) This is what I've come up with so far in my strategic planning. It's a work-in-progress. As for Pharo, I've downloaded it and played with it briefly. As far as I can tell, the IDE is not much different from Squeak. Like I said, the design has been tweaked and improved, but I don't see anything groundbreaking. Maybe you and I have different ideas of what "groundbreaking" means. Nevertheless, as another poster indicated, we can leave this for the future. For the time being, we need to make Smalltalk, and Pharo in particular, more attractive to the Enterprise. I'm sure Pharo is doing this. Kudos. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/The-Smalltalk-Renaissance-Program-tp4797112p4797313.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
