More stuff well said.
________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Jimmie Houchin [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 9:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Simple vs. Easy I agree! I like the focus of Pharo and its goal of enabling people to get things done. Stef, I think you are doing a great job. Especially with the limited resources of the community. And I think you are doing a fantastic job of increasing the resources of the community. You have my profound thanks and appreciation. Jimmie On 11/4/2011 4:32 PM, Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote: > Sven, Sig, > > Well said. > > Bill > > ________________________________________ > From: [email protected] > [[email protected]] on behalf of Sven Van > Caekenberghe [[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 11:22 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Simple vs. Easy > > Sure, Cuis is really cool as well as very impressive. > > However, it is limited: > > I want: > > Seaside > Moose > HTTP Client+Server > Monticello > Metacello > XML > JSON > Glorp > Database Access > FFI > UTF8 and other encodings > … > > I want a practical Smalltalk that I can use to build useful applications, > building on top of great frameworks. > > Pharo takes on all these and at the same time tries to simplify things, the > hard way. > > Sven > > On 04 Nov 2011, at 14:35, Jimmie Houchin wrote: > >> Forward with permission from Juan Vuletich Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:42:03 -0300 >> >> Hi Folks, >> >> I'm answering you off-list because I'm not subscribed to the Pharo list. >> Feel free to forward this there, if you wish. >> >> I think it is great to put focus on simplicity (an objective value) over >> easyness (a subjective value). Rich also makes a good critic to usual >> practices, including the dichotomy between understanding and TDD (test >> driven development). >> >> However, the value of simplicity is not something new. The difference >> between essential complexity and accidental complexity is the heart of >> "No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering" (by >> Fred Brooks, 1986) and "There Is a Silver Bullet" (by Brad Cox, 1990, >> http://drdobbs.com/184407534). It is also central to Smalltalk, see >> "Design Principles Behind Smalltalk" (by Dan Ingalls, 1981, >> http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps112/Spring03/readings/Ingalls81.html). >> These three articles might be the most important writings on software >> engineering ever. >> >> The problem with this discussion is that everybody will claim simplicity >> is a crucial objective of their project. However, Pharo and Squeak don't >> realize (or don't want to realize) that simplicity appears only by >> removing complexity, never by adding more of it. >> >> Cuis is a Squeak fork with the #1 objective of being simple and >> understandable. It is the result of more than 10 years suffering the >> accidental complexity in Squeak, comparing with other Smalltalks, >> together with a lot of reflection and work, by me and others. It is, I >> believe, the only Smalltalk in active development that pursues this >> objective of the original Smalltalk-80 project. You can get it from >> http://www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html . Browse it a bit. Take >> statistics (lines of code, etc). Compare. You might have a nice surprise. >> >> Jimmie, you asked "How can we move Pharo to be a better answer to Simple >> vs. Easy?". My answer is: start anew. Rebase on top of Cuis. Give up >> feature list as a priority, and focus on simplicity. Make a list of the >> features in Pharo that are really important, and not part of Cuis, and >> turn them into optional packages. Make that list as short as possible! >> Worry more about code quality and less about discarding potentially >> useful stuff, that is not good enough. >> >> Cheers, >> Juan Vuletich
