Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code
Gilad,
On 10/30/2010 2:17 AM, Gilad Bracha wrote:
In Newspeak, the Hopscotch browser maintains a history of everywhere
you've been, which is always one click away - which means any class,
object, workspace etc. is at most two clicks away at all times. I'm
not sure if this is what you meant
I mean more like seeing an actual graph with nodes so I can see the
shape of the traversal. I don't know if this would help in practice,
but I'd like to try it. Or has this approach been tried before and I
just missed it?
Andres.
Gilad,
I do not think you are "doing wrong" as you formulated it. In a way we
Smalltalkers are maybe a bit conservative, but speaking for myself I have
always found Newspeak extremely enticing. It was, as I am sure is the case
for many more Smalltalkers (and my guess is many more than you suspect based
on your post), always on my "should-look-into-it" list, but I just did not
find (and make ;-)) the time to actually put some effort into it. I think it
is worthwhile to try to make others than yourself make more noise about it,
not only within the Smalltalk community.
It may be a subject for another thread but I would like to put out a call
among the members of this mailing list, not per-se to actually and
structurally participate in the Newspeak effort, but at least to let others
and Gilad know that Newspeak is on your radar and that Gilad will not need
to say that "very few Smalltalkers are interested in Newspeak". I know I am!
2010/10/30 Gilad Bracha gilad@bracha.org
Andres,
On Oct 30, 2010, at 12:35 AM, Andres Valloud wrote:
I would like to try a browser that keeps track of the code navigation I
have had to make so far to get where I am, something that relieves me from
having to remember the graph traversal of the code. Does this exist?
In Newspeak, the Hopscotch browser maintains a history of everywhere you've
been, which is always one click away - which means any class, object,
workspace etc. is at most two clicks away at all times. I'm not sure if this
is what you meant
While I'm on the topic of Newspeak, here are some observations that are
perhaps relevant to this thread. Be aware that I am engaged in shameless
self promotion.
a. Newspeak has a syntax. So:
b You can edit Newspeak in whatever editor you want. The IDE runs in an
image in the classic Smalltalk way, but also saves each class you modify in
a file automatically.
c. The IDE has integrated support for source control. Currently this uses a
svn-Monticello integration, but the next phase will phase out Monticello and
work directly with mercurial, git or svn.
Furthermore
e. Newspeak introduced the Alien FFI, which allows us to use the rest of
the world's software. Case in point: we recently needed to talk to some
software over https. Squeak does not support this natively, and requires a
plugin, which is by its own documentation unstable. We just call out to
libCurl.
f. Using said aliens, we support a portable native GUI. Looks great on a
modern Windows machine. We could support mac as well, if we had more
resources. But, as Andres implies, this is fighting the last war. Hence:
g. We are getting close to running the exact same GUI in a browser.
h. As far as deployment goes, we can deploy apps independent of the IDE -
either via the browser or as executables (on Windows) or, in principle,
anything else. That is because the language actually supports modularity.
Some of these features need more work to reach full maturity. This could
happen sooner if we got more volunteers. While the Smalltalk community might
be a good source of such volunteers, I recognize it isn't happening.
So, what am I doing wrong? Newspeak is open source, it runs Squeak
Smalltalk as well as Newspeak, and provides a very Smalltalk-like experience
for those who want it, while addressing many of the issues that have been
brought up in this thread. Even so, very few Smalltalkers are interested in
working with Newspeak.
We do have Newspeak listed on http://www.world.st/implementations so everyone
should make some time :)
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018404p3020380.html
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Hi Geert, Rob and others,
On Oct 30, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Geert Claes wrote:
We do have Newspeak listed on http://www.world.st/implementations so everyone
should make some time :)
Thanks for that and for the good intentions!
If I may, I'll make one more observation. This thread (and similar ones, oft repeated among Smalltalkers) bemoans the fact that others do not see the beauty of Smalltalk. What I liked about this thread was that Smalltalkers were engaged in serious self examination. There seemed to be a realization that some things need real changes.
Perhaps as part of this self examination, one can see how hard it is to get out of one's comfort zone. The effort of engaging with and learning something different is more than most people can find the time and energy for - even when the differences are relatively modest, as in the case of Newspeak.
Some of the reasons some of you cannot get around to really getting involved with Newspeak are quite analogous to the reasons why your Pythonista or Java (or whatever) colleagues cannot get serious about Smalltalk.
I am well aware that this is not a terribly actionable observation. It's just the way it is. What one can do is identify weaknesses and work hard at fixing them, and hope that some people will find it worthwhile to become truly involved.
Cheers, Gilad
Hi Gilad and all -
This is a worthwhile topic, one to which I intend to respond, but it will take some time. Let's start by renaming the thread...
If I may, I'll make one more observation. This thread (and similar ones, oft repeated among Smalltalkers) bemoans the fact that others do not see the beauty of Smalltalk. What I liked about this thread was that Smalltalkers were engaged in serious self examination. There seemed to be a realization that some things need real changes.
Perhaps as part of this self examination, one can see how hard it is to get out of one's comfort zone. The effort of engaging with and learning something different is more than most people can find the time and energy for - even when the differences are relatively modest, as in the case of Newspeak.
Some of the reasons some of you cannot get around to really getting involved with Newspeak are quite analogous to the reasons why your Pythonista or Java (or whatever) colleagues cannot get serious about Smalltalk.
I am well aware that this is not a terribly actionable observation. It's just the way it is. What one can do is identify weaknesses and work hard at fixing them, and hope that some people will find it worthwhile to become truly involved.
Good People -
Adoption of a language, like any other adoption, is generally a
function of the needs and wants of the audience, and the strengths
and weaknesses of the substance being promoted. For better or worse,
this function can be significantly biased at the outset by marketing.
As technologists, we repeatedly underestimate the importance of
marketing and, even when we know we need to promote our systems, we
fail because the skills of marketing are not simply technical skills.
Who are our users?
We all have our own answer for this. I'll answer for myself so that
I can be articulate -- these are the users I would like to attract,
or who I feel would find our system valuable if they used it...
Kids at play - ie people 8-16 who are doing fun things
Kids at work - ie students 8-20 who are doing more serious things
like math (including computer science), physics, graphics, music, etc
Computer professionals at play - most of us
Computer professionals at work - most of us
About the computing context
The computing context has changed a lot over the years. It used to
be personal computers running Mac, Windows or Unix, and it used to be
simple functions like text editing and experiments with media. Now
it is mostly running in "the" browser, and communicating over the
web. A couple of things have remained key values, though: The
ability to create new content simply and directly, and the ability to
pull together existing content flexibly. By "content" I mean both
media and functions (services). The ability to assemble existing
content has been the greatest strength and weakness of Smalltalk over
the years. For internal content, Smalltalk is unmatched in its
ability to make every extension, whether music, graphics, or a
financial model, as natural as a built-in language feature. For
external content, however, Smalltalk has historically faltered at the
edges of its monolithic system.
What do the users need and want?
The ability to create new content simply and directly,
the ability to assemble existing content flexibly, and
the ability to share any results easily.
What is important for marketing
An old quote of Alan's is still relevant here: "Simple things should
be simple, and complex things should be possible." Smalltalk has
always suffered from two main barriers: installation and
integration. Once you have it installed, and if you don't need to
access anything outside, it is unmatched in its ability to make
simple things simply, and to achieve complex goals as well. Within
its self-contained context, its image model is perfect for saving,
restoring, and sharing work between sessions, between machines, and
between users.
In the world of today, people expect any new thing of interest to
spring to life in their browser.
They expect it to look attractive, cool, powerful; anything but geeky...
http://emberapp.com/http://emberapp.com/
http://www.thecssawards.com/ http://www.thecssawards.com/
http://cssmania.com/galleries/http://cssmania.com/galleries/
You want this, too, right? So we can use "we" in place of "they".
We expect it to be immediately useful. For a computer language, this
means you can immediately try out some expressions and make something
happen. We want this. We are busy, and we don't have time to
download a new environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new
graphics system, right?
We expect it to be incremental - do some work, save it, pick it up
later - we expect the comforts of Smalltalk-style development.
We expect it to be sharable - do something and send it to someone.
It's what we do with email, photos and videos. We probably want it
to be self-sharing, how about your workspace in your facebook page,
and tweets about each cool new thing.
These are the things that Gilad and I are grappling with, and I think
everyone on this list probably thinks the same way from time to time.
Gilad is trying to fix some of the modularity problems in Smalltalk
and exploit some of its greatest strengths, while figuring out how to
host it in today's (or tomorrow's) browsers. And I've been playing
around with what's possible using JavaScript directly, but with some
Smalltalk comforts like a nice browser, work in a live editable
environment, and save your project state as a web page.
To return to Gilad's post,
[my interpretation: We don't take the time and effort to explore new
systems, and we don't take the time and effort to make our own
systems easy for others to explore]
I am well aware that this is not a terribly actionable observation.
It's just the way it is. What one can do is identify weaknesses and
work hard at fixing them, and hope that some people will find it
worthwhile to become truly involved.
I feel the same way. But if you feel the same way from time to time,
perhaps you should start a movement to do something similar, or see
how you could contribute to NewSpeak or the Lively Kernel; not to
abandon Smalltalk but to experiment with how to carry its goals and
your desires forward.
Nothing is holding us back
- D
Dan, how would you reconcile the need for immediate usefulness and the
assumption that "we are busy, and we don't have time to download a new
environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new graphics system",
with Alan's assertion that technology these days is flawed because it
requires little effort?
================
A twentieth century problem is that technology has become too "easy".
When it was hard to do anything whether good or bad, enough time was
taken so that the result was usually good. Now we can make things almost
trivially, especially in software, but most of the designs are trivial
as well. This is inverse vandalism: the making of things because you
can. Couple this to even less sophisticated buyers and you have
generated an exploitation marketplace similar to that set up for
teenagers. A counter to this is to generate enormous dissatisfaction
with one's designs using the entire history of human art as a standard
and goal. Then the trick is to decouple the dissatisfaction from self
worth--otherwise it is either too depressing or one stops too soon with
trivial results.
In this context, what does it mean to be useful if it requires no
effort? Is this an issue of being able to quickly differentiate
ourselves from others because, absent a flashy presentation, we feel we
(and our work) are indistinguishable from others (and their work)? Not
that we have control over that issue, but I think it would be important
to acknowledge that motivation explicitly if it is really there.
On 10/30/2010 1:48 PM, Dan Ingalls wrote:
Good People -
Adoption of a language, like any other adoption, is generally a function
of the needs and wants of the audience, and the strengths and weaknesses
of the substance being promoted. For better or worse, this function can
be significantly biased at the outset by marketing. As technologists, we
repeatedly underestimate the importance of marketing and, even when we
know we need to promote our systems, we fail because the skills of
marketing are not simply technical skills.
Who are our users?
We all have our own answer for this. I'll answer for myself so that I
can be articulate -- these are the users I would like to attract, or who
I feel would find our system valuable if they used it...
Kids at play - ie people 8-16 who are doing fun things
Kids at work - ie students 8-20 who are doing more serious things like
math (including computer science), physics, graphics, music, etc
Computer professionals at play - most of us
Computer professionals at work - most of us
About the computing context
The computing context has changed a lot over the years. It used to be
personal computers running Mac, Windows or Unix, and it used to be
simple functions like text editing and experiments with media. Now it is
mostly running in "the" browser, and communicating over the web. A
couple of things have remained key values, though: The ability to create
new content simply and directly, and the ability to pull together
existing content flexibly. By "content" I mean both media and functions
(services). The ability to assemble existing content has been the
greatest strength and weakness of Smalltalk over the years. For internal
content, Smalltalk is unmatched in its ability to make every extension,
whether music, graphics, or a financial model, as natural as a built-in
language feature. For external content, however, Smalltalk has
historically faltered at the edges of its monolithic system.
What do the users need and want?
The ability to create new content simply and directly,
the ability to assemble existing content flexibly, and
the ability to share any results easily.
What is important for marketing
An old quote of Alan's is still relevant here: "Simple things should be
simple, and complex things should be possible." Smalltalk has always
suffered from two main barriers: installation and integration. Once you
have it installed, and if you don't need to access anything outside, it
is unmatched in its ability to make simple things simply, and to achieve
complex goals as well. Within its self-contained context, its image
model is perfect for saving, restoring, and sharing work between
sessions, between machines, and between users.
In the world of today, people expect any new thing of interest to spring
to life in their browser.
They expect it to look attractive, cool, powerful; anything but geeky...
http://emberapp.com/
http://www.thecssawards.com/
http://cssmania.com/galleries/
You want this, too, right? So we can use "we" in place of "they".
We expect it to be immediately useful. For a computer language, this
means you can immediately try out some expressions and make something
happen. We want this. We are busy, and we don't have time to download a
new environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new graphics system,
right?
We expect it to be incremental - do some work, save it, pick it up later
- we expect the comforts of Smalltalk-style development.
We expect it to be sharable - do something and send it to someone. It's
what we do with email, photos and videos. We probably want it to be
self-sharing, how about your workspace in your facebook page, and tweets
about each cool new thing.
These are the things that Gilad and I are grappling with, and I think
everyone on this list probably thinks the same way from time to time.
Gilad is trying to fix some of the modularity problems in Smalltalk and
exploit some of its greatest strengths, while figuring out how to host
it in today's (or tomorrow's) browsers. And I've been playing around
with what's possible using JavaScript directly, but with some Smalltalk
comforts like a nice browser, work in a live editable environment, and
save your project state as a web page.
To return to Gilad's post,
[my interpretation: We don't take the time and effort to explore new
systems, and we don't take the time and effort to make our own systems
easy for others to explore]
I am well aware that this is not a terribly actionable observation.
It's just the way it is. What one can do is identify weaknesses and
work hard at fixing them, and hope that some people will find it
worthwhile to become truly involved.
I feel the same way. But if you feel the same way from time to time,
perhaps you should start a movement to do something similar, or see how
you could contribute to NewSpeak or the Lively Kernel; not to abandon
Smalltalk but to experiment with how to carry its goals and your
desires forward.
Nothing is holding us back
- D
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Esug-list@lists.esug.org
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Hi Andres -
Dan, how would you reconcile the need for immediate usefulness and the assumption that "we are busy, and we don't have time to download a new environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new graphics system", with Alan's assertion that technology these days is flawed because it requires little effort?
To me it's a question of curriculum. You start with a few interesting things on the table and go from there. I don't think Alan has any problem with this. You need to engage your audience one way or another. Hopefully the initial set is somehow provocative.
================
A twentieth century problem is that technology has become too "easy". When it was hard to do anything whether good or bad, enough time was taken so that the result was usually good. Now we can make things almost trivially, especially in software, but most of the designs are trivial as well. This is inverse vandalism: the making of things because you can. Couple this to even less sophisticated buyers and you have generated an exploitation marketplace similar to that set up for teenagers. A counter to this is to generate enormous dissatisfaction with one's designs using the entire history of human art as a standard and goal. Then the trick is to decouple the dissatisfaction from self worth--otherwise it is either too depressing or one stops too soon with trivial results.
In this context, what does it mean to be useful if it requires no effort?
I'm not saying no effort to build significant stuff. But no effort to engage -- that's good curriculum / good marketing.
Is this an issue of being able to quickly differentiate ourselves from others because, absent a flashy presentation, we feel we (and our work) are indistinguishable from others (and their work)? Not that we have control over that issue, but I think it would be important to acknowledge that motivation explicitly if it is really there.
No, it's more about not differentiating ourselves negatively -- not adding barriers. Show what you are at first click, and what you can do at second click.
I'm not saying I've succeeded here, but I know it matters.
- D
Dan Ingalls wrote:
... As technologists, we repeatedly underestimate the importance of
marketing and, even when we know we need to promote our systems, we fail
because the skills of marketing are not simply technical skills.
Marketing should not be something which is done by non-technologists only,
it is about keeping the user as the central focus of "all" activities. As
you said, its about who the users are, and also about what their
expectations are and how to best address these.
Dan Ingalls wrote:
... Now it is mostly running in "the" browser, and communicating over the
web....
Agree!
Dan Ingalls wrote:
...Smalltalk has always suffered from two main barriers: installation and
integration. Once you have it installed, and if you don't need to access
anything outside, it is unmatched in its ability to make
simple things simply, and to achieve complex goals as well...
I think Gilad was onto something with his "Objects as Software Services"
talk at OOPSLA 2005 about not just the installation, but also the continuos
upgrade process. For systems running in the cloud it may be a different
story again?
Dan Ingalls wrote:
In the world of today, people expect any new thing of interest to spring
to life in their browser.
They expect it to look attractive, cool, powerful; anything but geeky...
Agree again.
Dan Ingalls wrote:
We expect it to be immediately useful. For a computer language, this
means you can immediately try out some expressions and make something
happen. We want this. We are busy, and we don't have time to
download a new environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new graphics
system, right?
We expect it to be incremental - do some work, save it, pick it up later -
we expect the comforts of Smalltalk-style development....
The "download a new environment" may not mean to a local machine, because I
would like to add that we also expect to pick it up anywhere and probably
also on any device!
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018404p3020900.html
Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Geert Claes geert.wl.claes@gmail.comwrote:
Dan Ingalls wrote:
... As technologists, we repeatedly underestimate the importance of
marketing and, even when we know we need to promote our systems, we fail
because the skills of marketing are not simply technical skills.
Marketing should not be something which is done by non-technologists only,
it is about keeping the user as the central focus of "all" activities. As
you said, its about who the users are, and also about what their
expectations are and how to best address these.
Hi,
I strongly agree on this.
IMHO community projects need good leaders to be successful, people who cares
about attracting people, create fun and visibility, discuss and set
orientations, establish effective processes to lower waste of time and
allow newbies to easily submit a one line code patch and give immediate
feedback to them.
So it means that a leader's work is actually more reading and answering
emails, write documentation, retrospectives and visions than writing code.
Today social network usage is strong, people search for friends and
eventually build things together for fun and status, write blogs, create
beautiful web sites, ...
Agile movement shows how vital communication and fun are.
Maybe people/community is the most important thing on these projects. Good
design / technical aspect seems only the second most important thing :)
Cheers,
Laurent Laffont
Pharo Smalltalk Screencasts: http://www.pharocasts.com/
Blog: http://magaloma.blogspot.com/