Hello Sudhakar,
I totally agree. I believe we can build the future we want. And if we
don't, we deserve to get what others provide or envision for us.
I believe we can deliver a better experience as a client, and a better
developer experience as a server. I personally don't know of anything
that approaches Smalltalk for a comprehensive experience.
With appropriate funding, we can accomplish great things. And without
it, we are better than most. First, we can envision things that others
do not have the worldview to be able to envision.
It always frustrates me whenever I have to restart an OS, or an app
because of some software update. Ugh! Really ..., this is 2012 and we
can't do better. I believe Pharo has a great future and I hope to
contribute.
And the nice thing is, that we can do web apps as well as, or better
than others. We also can improve our UI abilities and do better than
others there. We can cover both worlds quite well.
Just my opinion.
Jimmie
On 2/22/2012 11:30 AM, S Krish wrote:
Pharo can and does run beautifully on much lesser hardware requirement
than Android does.
Combine Pharo with tiny core linux or put it on top of Raspberry Pi.. I
am sure for a 128 MB RAM, 256MB Pharo can offer the best experience.
We may have a need to optimize the performance etc.. but that is work
underway and I am sure in another year we will have something workable.
Even if not, provided a good enterprise funding it can be done in less
time than it took to get Android to shape.
Future will obviously provide 1GB RAM Tablet at 60$ or less.. but not
visibly in the next couple of years.. We should push for adoption in
these yet available opportunities of linux variants, Raspberry pi to
offer a cleaner / leaner Pharo Kernel.
As for all the predictions of Web taking over, I have yet to comprehend
Web as a means to have best user experience. It offers a major advantage
of all of the server processing with just the client view presentation
or minimal view code on the browser, but if you look at Gmail with ever
increasing javascript base, the Dart, the HTML 5 elements specially the
sqllite, video tag, canvas, it is just slowly converting browsers to
general purpose presentation engine, with as much power of desktop app.
But this generalization of presentation will remain a compromise.
I for one do believe that server side focus though is very important for
Pharo, the desktop is where with Morphic cleaned up, multi touch
enabled, Open GL integration, newer paradigm of interactive user
interface blurring the line of dev/ runtime, complete flexibility,
ductile, elastic.. throw in all adjectives it can throw open a totally
new frontier.
This is all not tablets, multi touch will rule all of large screen
displays in future from banks, hospitals to any place. Useful greatly
for medical presentations, manipulations, but equally usable in
corporate world of the future..
Segregate the concept of server side from delivering web browser apps.
That is a bit of enterprise fallacy. Yes nice in social context, but I
do believe its been a marketing overkill to make browsers the default
client for enterprise, but half driven by drabness of widgetry from Java
world and the complexity of the Windows UI toolkit. Still the richness
of widgets on a GUI app is not trifling work to replicate in a web and
we can easily do a client-server app with all the business executed on
the server and / or agent network delivery of parcelled code sections
that clients trade with and complete their tasks. This code section
transfer can be same model as the javascript transfers on a browser.
Web has as yet not delivered on its promises for Office Suite, even a
comparable email client to Outlook, Thunderbird and others.. it may have
killed also rans of the past but not comparable to feature / capability
of desktop. I doubt if I will ever see MS Office vanish.. perhaps Star
Office is the only alternative but not web really.
photo viewing the most ubiquitous of web apps, are a pain developing
compared to a morphic app if we indulge ourselves in.. ,Yes it will
require a year or more of effort coming up with ecquvivalents to
javascript libraries.. but when done, or lets say custom done it is
neater, easier , flexible than using those libraries. I do not rate
Picassa as great... at all, with morphic you can have all jazz custom
built as in flash but lot more fun..
I forsee, the possibility given a good start up with decent funds, can
work out more out of Morphic in couple of years, that can make desktop
the fun place to be in..
Why not think of Pharo on the TV screen/ other such devices to present
all the complex UI's, menu's that are primarily morphic widgets that get
you through to playing the streaming video, disks et all.. but all of
its UI layer can easily be a fun work with Morphic.. it can offer all
the fun of twisting morphs, decorated and intelligent morphs placed/
floating / animation or whatever is your raging thought.. on these large
screens.. Of course I wish we could ensure perfection in rendering a la
Cuis. for that to be not just fun but perfect.
Look at all the devices that are in hospitals that do cry for a UI
revamp, I am sure with half decent effort we can make the UI on devices
greater fun..for everyone, the user, the developer and ofcourse the
enterprise making money, than what we see in there. All of PoS apps in
VB and its ilk.. are generation old,
With my little dev interface I have now cobbled up with three Worlds/
Panels, I have seen a glint in the eyes of the newbies that they are
working on something ahead of the current world, but the crashes,
glitches do get them doubting..!, which I intend to smoothen and even
cloak around a bit so that they do not feel the rough edges unless they
are experienced smalltalkers to comprehend all of it.
