On 12 January 2012 11:30, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12 Jan 2012, at 10:23, Stéphane Ducasse wrote: > >> Hello Gerry >> >>> Hello All, >>> >>> I've been thinking about the idea of an alternate IDE quite a bit. What I'm >>> envisioning would be something akin to the Delphi IDE. Delphi is probably >>> the most productive gui based environment I've ever worked in. It would be >>> very interesting to combine Smalltalk with such an environment. My feeling >>> about the current IDE is that it is somewhat dated. >> >> + 1000000 >> >>> It was designed at a time when monitors were the size of port holes. I >>> think an updated environment would go a long way to making the language >>> more interesting and accessible. The difficult part about Smalltalk >>> certainly isn't the language, it's the strange IDE layout. If that barrier >>> were to be removed, then a person could really hit the ground running. The >>> only real difference I would see between the old and the new would be the >>> code editor. The rest would just be a little rearranging of what is already >>> there. I'm slowly talking my self >>> into actually starting down the road a bit. I think I'll try to find a few >>> days that I can spend doing some investigating. >>> >>> Any thoughts? >> >> Brainstorm using glamour to prototype something. >> We definitively need innovation and rethink how we work. >> >> I can tell you that what we have is not what I dream of. > > I am all for people trying/prototyping new stuff, new ideas; that's one of > the strong points of Smalltalk. > > However, I think/feel that for most Smalltalk developers, the combination of > Language+Libraries+IDE in its current state is way better than anything else > out there, why else would we keep using it, why else would we choose it above > other environments ? > > In that perspective, I am a bit wary about people who want to change it all > to make it so much better, especially if they are not experienced > Smalltalkers.
You have a point in that people new to Smalltalk might be used to something and not realise that they're used to pain and suffering that they needn't suffer. The reverse is also true: we too as a community have blind spots, and put up with pain and suffering because we've just gotten used to it. frank
