On 5/15/20 5:26 AM, Shaping wrote:
I don’t understand the split. It looks silly. Maybe someone can
explain the split in terms of technical/architectural advantages, if
any exist.
Cheers,
Shaping
I began using Squeak about 20 years ago. And then Pharo when it started.
I will explain as best as I can.
The differences do have bearing on architecture and technical things but
at the beginning the basis of it all is philosophy. Differences in what
you want Squeak/Pharo to be, where you want it go.
Squeak is from Apple Smalltalk. Smalltalk is not simply a language, but
began as an OS, an environment and a language. It ran directly on the
hardware. Then Smalltalk was ported to operating systems. But still took
with it a very OS like environment and world view. It was the world.
This was very much Squeak. Squeak was the world. It was an amazing and
interesting environment. It could play mp3s, had MIDI capabilities. It
was a very interesting multimedia environment. Bright, colorful,
creative. But it was also a very productive programming environment to
build whatever you wanted to build.
All of the people involved in Squeak, loved the productivity of the
Smalltalk language and the live environment. You had debates about "Pink
plane" vs "Blue plane". What was the direction of the community and the
artifact Squeak. There were two large communities with differing
opinions on direction.
Alan Kay
The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet OOPSLA 97 Keynote (VPRI 0719)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYT2se94eU0
"""
https://pab-data.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-colour-do-you-like-your-objects.html
In Alan Kay's keynote speech at OOPSLA in 1997 he talks about a blue
plane and a pink plane. The pink plane represents ideas which are an
incremental improvement of existing ideas. The blue plane which runs
orthogonal to the pink represents revolutionary ideas that break the old
way of doing things, setting you off in a new direction.
"""
Many people had projects and ideas which were very able to be done in
Squeak, but did not want the entire OS-like image. ...
Maybe I want a web server. I don't need to play multimedia files. Have
a GUI. etc.
Insert your own application here.
People wanted to build businesses around what they could do with Squeak.
The Pink plane community wanted to begin to clean up Squeak. Break it up
into parts which could be reloaded. It wanted a much more modular
environment which allowed you to build the image you want for the
purpose you intend.
The Blue plane community didn't see any problems with the way it was.
They liked it and still do. It fit what they wanted to do with
Squeak/Smalltalk. Frequently more research oriented and less business
oriented.
Then in the midst of all this you have overlap in individuals who
understand both. You also had personality differences and disagreements
which developed over years.
Eventually the Pink plane community forked and created Pharo. The
foundational community of Squeak (Blue plane) did not want to make the
changes the Pink plane community wanted or required.
Pharo is now 12 years or so into its journey. It is not easy losing
weight and still keep working. But that is the goal of Pharo. Keep
reducing until the entire system can be built up from a base image. And
when it gets there. We don't have a problem with from that foundation,
being able to build it back up into a Squeak-like image.
I have numerous projects which I am doing in Pharo. One is a trading
application. I personally want as little in my image as possible which
does not have to do with my trading application. It desires to be as
fast as possible, run without failure, and as memory and cpu efficient
as I can make it to be in Pharo. I could make and run this application
in Squeak. But it would include much that I don't need and don't want.
And that is the case in Pharo currently as well. But Pharo has its
philosophy and its direction that it is moving towards. At some point in
time my trading application will what I want it to be with very little
unused code in the image. That might not be until Pharo 10+. I don't
know. But there is a vision within Pharo for people to build such
applications.
I have not used Squeak in years. And nothing I write here is meant to
speak badly about Squeak. I like the Squeak community. They are full of
great people. And I do not know how accurate what I write is to the
current Squeak. My apologies for any inaccuracies or errors.
Pharo in general is much more pro-business. It is an explicit goal of Pharo.
https://pharo.org/about
https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/30434/PharoVision.pdf
Both websites give you a feel for who the community is and the
orientation of their goals.
As much as re-unification would be nice. I don't know that it will
happen. At a minimum, not until the Squeak community could build Squeak
from a Pharo kernel image. Then it would be possible. But I don't think
likely.
This is just my generalizations in an effort to answer your question.
There are people who are in both communities. Both communities in
general attempt to cooperate when we can. Both are communities with
friendly, amazing people. And both communities have people who have been
doing this for a very long time, and that is a very good thing.
Both are completely open source projects which will allow you to do
whatever you want within your abilities and resources.
Basically it is simply this. Different visions for the direction of the
project and the pursuit of those directions for an extended period of
time. This email is an simplification of a lot discussions and debates
over a period of years which finally lead to a fork of Squeak.
Hope this helps.
Jimmie Houchin
