There is definitely the other side of things, that side that says you cant have an omelet if you don't brake some eggs. I always admire people that go against the flow , people who are willing to sacrifice convenience for progress.
I do believe in the direction pharo is going , I do believe that keeping code clean and reliable should be main priority. And even though people love to call attempts dead and futile , ideas are near impossible to kill because they always find brains to flourish on. And even a bad idea in time can turn into something great. Because as one Greek philosopher once said "everything is changing" , everything has a life of its own, and as far as software is concern as long as there are coders for it , it aint dead yet. And there definitely benefits to be gained from braking compatibility. But progress is definitely a tricky things full of pitfalls and new is not always better. Its ironic how software seems to going back through time nowdays and rediscovering old relics like smalltalk and lisp. And "old" becomes the new "new". Definitely keeping an open mind is the wise thing to do any direction one may chooses to go. And I am certainly going to follow pharo and squeak progress closely because both have still a lot to say. ________________________________ From: Nicolas Cellier <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 22:50 Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] About (backwards) Compatibility 2012/12/11 Chris Muller <[email protected]>: > If my goal is to make my computer work for ME, then I want my > development system to maximize my leverage and minimize my effort. > Breaking compatibility for cleaner code subverts this, as Hannes said, > One thing is clear, forking is not anything near minimizing the effort, quite the opposite. It's the way to build one's own jail - some will say to be free ;). Clearly, Marcus and Stephane have other goals and it's a good thing to have both Squeak and Pharo. >>> Constant input in maintenance effort is needed. > > I want to use my time applying Smalltalk to real-world problems, not > API changes. > > A blue-plane innovation is worth breaking backward compatibility, > reinventing the past isn't. > Ah, if future is the past, then I wonder whether it's not yet another damned Smalltalk circularity trick ;) > >>> maintaining libraries and maybe compatibility layers are very welcome. >>> >> Yes, and how did we ever thought we could invent the future with Squeak >> when in reality, we could not even change a typo in a comment? >> >> Marcus >> >> >> >> >
