Em 22-02-2011 05:12, Geert Claes escreveu: > > csrabak wrote: >>> Focusing in the squeak/pharo/cuis branch, I've noticed that pharo >>> people got really concerned in >>> aspects that can attract market interest. They're looking for >>> funding, fighting to have "hired >>> people" (meaning under wages) minding "hairy aspects" of development, >>> maintenance, documentation >>> and some sort of "standardization", etc. Collaborators also produced >>> interesting "printed material" (books, >>> tutorials) but IMO such material is still very academic in nature. People >>> in industry likes best "manual" >>> stuff (like "foundation classes" with "methods" (messages in the >>> case) documented, etc). IMO (again) >>> here lies a relevant problem: there are "no foundation classes" (no >>> "landmarks" or things that cannot be > easily changed) and it becomes >>> apparent when people exchange ideas about "keeping this" and "getting >>> rid of that". At least debate is going on and many issues have been >>> addressed. >> >> Yes. >> > I don't understand what was said here? Can someone elaborate? In order to increase acceptance of smalltalk in corporate world (and even in academic and scientific worlds) someone (pharo/squeak/cuis people) must come out with a solution that:
1) Is well documented 2) Is supported 3) Is stable To be well documented (in the sense corporate world understands it) a smalltalk distro must: 1) Have a body (a set of) classes that are considered "foundation classes". Those must be present in all versions of the distribution and must have an unchanging set of features (in the case of smalltalk: an unchanging set of messages,considering instance and class variables are available through assessors). Those foundation classes must cover a range of functionalities that makes the distro useful. 2) These foundation classes must be documented in a way that resembles, at least, man pages of *nix (syntax, semantics, dependencies, known bugs, exceptions, etc) 3) Foundation classes should be arranged in "orthogonal" packages (meaning: if I unload one package everything that doesn't depend on it still works). Anyways, dependencies should be documented in a very clear and explicit way. Just to give an example on how lack of documentation hurts open smalltalk, how many people gave it up for not being able to deliver acceptable interfaces because Morphic is hideously documented? I know several ones. In real corporate world, learning through trial and error is not acceptable, just like blowing schedule up due to the need to figure out by experience how ProportionalLayout works neither... To be supported there must be people in charge of: 1) Debugging and fixing it (inside a well known schedule & following an agreed maintenance protocol) 2) Elaborating suitable documentation (as described above) 3) Preparing didactic material (courses, books, etc) 4) Disseminating information of what's going on inside distro's development (much in the way Ubuntu/Fedora/etc communities do) Stable is stable... There are other things that are important but IMO they all come after ones I just wrote about.
