This incredible piece of feedback was hiding at http://code.google.com/p/pharo/wiki/HowToContribute . We should all have this pinned to the wall behind our computer:
Sometimes I make some "exercise" on Smalltalk/Squeak for the fun, sometimes I try to build tools in Squeak to solve some practical problem or personal need. I'm not a programmer, just a curious guy, completely ignorant about programming, who, some years ago, found Smalltalk/Squeak to be the only human programming language I could cope with. But every time I try to do something with Squeak I stumble on this inevitable conclusion: it is one of the most entropic things I ever met in my life. The reason for this may lay partly on structural reasons - I wouldn't know, because I'm an ignorant, as I stated before. But there is a second reason I know for sure: the owners' and contributors' inability to step out of the developer's perspective, to put a distance towards themselves (and towards the result of their work). As a result, Squeak is probably the worst documented language in the world. Documentation and comments on the code are completely entropic, self-centered, tautological; it is experts talking to all-knowing experts - like those stupid old-fashioned dictionaries where every word definition tends to be built with the defined word. Until now I had a look to Pharo system browser only for a few minutes, but that was enough for me to get the impression that you are trying to get over this dreadful limitation, to jump over the limits of an strictly enclosed community, rehearsing new tentative styles to comment code and classes. If I got it right and this is true, congratulations and thank you very much for your effort. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/The-Keys-to-the-Kingdom-tp3780556p3780556.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
