Hi Jimmie.
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. 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. Applied basic research is most of what I do. I still want a clean, modular environment. I don’t see how that interferes with creative verve. It should help if only by limiting confusion and clarifying configurational choices. 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. What are the specific changes that Squeak folks don’t want to make? Squeak/Pharo is a configurable environment. We can still have a quasi-OS world if we want that. What specific aspects of the analytic and creative experience break or degrade for Squeak users with these specific changes, and also cannot be preserved by loading the right Smalltalk packages? 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. This points to needing more modularity, not less. We want to unload all that we don’t want, in small or big pieces, easily and confidently, without breaking anything. It sounds easy, but it’s not. I think this should be one of the Consortium’s main goals. 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. Image minimization is a useful feature. A Squeak user would want this too, at least when deploying. 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. Logical and utilitarian. 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. What are the specific problems? Anyone? 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. Shaping
