Hi,
I think that Smalltalk community is larger that the Squeak one. Some healthy forks like Cuis or Pharo have small but dynamic communities behind to serve different interests and community dynamics. So I think that people interested mostly in education for children gravitated towards Squeak, others about minimal design surround Cuis and the more focused on software and data visualization are around Pharo. I don't think that all the people is trying to go the next big thing/trend (i.e. functional, multicore, whatever) and there is a lot of good vibra acroos Smalltalk communities, as you can see on the Smalltalks (South America, Argentina) or ESUG (Europe, itinerant). Just last week we were doing a workshop on data activism and visualization using moldable tools in Medellín, Colombia, that is more related with young and adults "data literacy" and critical education (details and galleries on [1]).
[1] http://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/ds-twitter-mockup
So is not like forking as a Holy War between dialects, but forking as a way to explore interconnected diversities with Smalltalk and its legacy. I don't know what is happening in the United States, closely since 2007, but I think that Smalltalk is pretty alive and diverse if you know where to look.
Cheers,
Offray
On 03/08/16 10:00, Joseph Alotta wrote:
- The community seems TINY for such a cool project. At this point
it seems to mainly consist of people in academics and "old-timers" that have stuck around since a time when Squeak was more popular. Is this correct or am I maybe not looking in the right places?
It seems a shame if such an amazing project were to die out because
of lack of popularity, considering all the possibilities that this level of intractability with the programming environment enables.
I’m trying to change that. I’ve started a meetup group in the Chicago area for learning Squeak. I am hoping to have a lot of young people get interested in it.
I have programmed in many languages and I find smalltalk to be the easiest to read and understand. I’ve written code in come languages, that 6 months later was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote it, nor even if I wrote it.
With smalltalk, I don’t find that. I actually enjoy programming.
Sincerely,
Joe.
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