On 22 March 2013 10:54, Norbert Hartl <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > good write up. You've picked up some essential things pretty quick :) > Comments inline! > > Am 22.03.2013 um 03:09 schrieb Victor Stan <[email protected]>: > > Thank you all for your responses, I appreciate all the good feedback around > this topic. > > Rather than try to address individual replies in their respective email > responses, I will summary what I learned and what my thoughts are. > > The trend now is to use http://smalltalkhub.com/ which is a bit like a > combination of GitHub (source control) and https://rubygems.org/ (library > repository). > > There are historical precedents for why things are the way they are now: > Monticello was really good when it came out and still a fairly useful tool, > the nature of Smalltalk images is that all the tools tend to be inside of > the image and thus there is little incentive to focus on external tools. I > think the nature of the web and the power of contemporary browsers has given > rise to quite advanced web applications which have been able to surpass > certain tools inside of the traditional Smalltalk image (hence the topic: > Github). I'm not going to list its features, anyone that isn't familiar can > very easily become familiar with what it can do by trying it out, its free. > > There's been some confusion, probably because of my forming of the question > with poor mapping from the tools that I know to what Pharo/Smalltalk has to > offer... so really, there is the question of source control and sharing code > between teams and developers and library hosting. > > Online services that leverage source control and offer tools like easy > online browsing of repositories/source code as well as the ability for > developers to do pull requests and code review, not to mention forking > repositories and reviving dead code, documenting and bug tracking. > > Besides managing source code, there is the concept of libraries, which > overlaps greatly with source code management, but such repositories need not > have all the tools previously listed, but do need to have a way to allow > developers to quickly find and tap into existing code libraries; to easily > create, share and download these libraries is central such a service. In > this regard I think Monticello and http://www.squeaksource.com/ are the > tools in Smalltalk world that map the most to that concept > (https://rubygems.org/)? (correct me if I'm wrong). > > I understand the image/smalltalk kernel as a self sufficient enclosed world > is why live objects are possible, and that's the beauty of Smalltalk. I see > there is effort to build towards a more open (in the sense of the world wide > web) set of tools to manage code and libraries. I still don't understand why > smalltalkhub.com is trying to be both a library and source code control tool > at the same time. > > I think leveraging tools currently available, and which have a large > user-base is better for allowing new users who come from another environment > -- pretty much everyone that deals with open source web and mobile > application development knows how to use GitHub. But I will stick around and > see how those that know more about the Smalltalk world make their decisions. > I want to see a growing and thriving ST community! > > Traditionally and culturally, at first glance, forgive me if I'm > stereotyping, but the smalltalk world seems to be heavily biased towards > academic and large proprietary enterprise tooling and development > environments. I think this is a reason (among others, from what I've read > around) why ST hasn't picked up steam as the WWW grew up, the developers and > tools were simply not geared toward such an environment. However, while I'm > guessing that most developers in ST are still heavily oriented toward > enterprise platforms, we can all benefit by bringing aboard more developers > and creating a large market and demand for ST developers, and I'm going to > go on a limb here and say that that's not going to happen until we can > integrate with the tools and culture of contemporary web development. Anyone > have opinions on this? > > The stereotype about being academicly biased is ok but not quite accurate. > If you encounter the smalltalk world from pharo it might look like that. But > this is rather pharo specific. If you look at cincom smalltalk the > impression will be different. > > As others mentioned the discussion about success occurrs regularly on this > and other mailing lists. > > In your inquiry for opinion you placed some assumptions I cannot share. I > cannot agree that "pick up the steam", "grow" "creating a large market" is > something good per se. These categories have no value in itself. What do we > get for having that kind of success? I do not know how to create success but > I know that following these goals would help let smalltalk die. >
+1 i think we should focus on improving experience for community (the people who using pharo and know how to make it better), and for people who would like to use it, but missing some key functionality. In any case, this will distill into a list of tasks/goals with clear outcome. > I might ask you why you encounter smalltalk. To learn something > new/different? How can you learn something new/different if you think it > should do the same as everyone else does? If smalltalk wouldn't be that > reluctant it would have e.g. picked about file based source code long ago. > And that would have turned it much worse. On the contrary you are quite > right that smalltalk suffers from its islandish being. But giving up being > on an island should be done carefully in order not to drown in the > mainstream. i would say "to not be washed away". > > Norbert > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.
