All,
I've been wondering how to show the power of objects and the power of an environment like smalltalk to everyday users. Probably the best way is to provide features within the environment that they can really use every day - right out of the box. The idea is secondary to my (motivated, but not much action) desire to make Squeak available and usable to everyday users.
Today, popular applications are vertical and on disparate OSs. There are some applications that talk to one another using different forms of communication, depending on the OS. Some mainstream type apps are cross platform - like firefox, Thunderbird. But, this bandaid is not the vision Alan, Dan, and the rest of the Xerox PARC Learning team had for the personal computer and dynabook. I'm sure they can be improved, but I really like their ideas. I know I'm preaching to the choir!
It would be nice to reverse the trend, or at the very least provide a usable alternative. The world missed a great opportunity in the early 80s. Today people really can't customize their environment to their needs - and the dynabook vision was just that. I want to see that work.
If the squeak community could provide leadership by creating and producing significant features that most people need today, we might get the ball rolling for users to start using squeak and for developers to see the richness of the environment - and thus start the development cycle to provide more features for everyday users. (apps like seaside are doing significant work in this area for developers.)
I believe the top applications used today, in popularity order, are:
1. Email (including calendaring) 2. Web 3. Word Processing 4. Spreadsheet 5. Presentation
Maybe I missed something, or maybe I'm wrong -- this is off the top of my head. Sounds right, though. (4 of these apps are in the MS Office product and 3 in the OpenOffice package.)
If we could concentrate on the first two that included critical modules that provided the popular features of an email app and a web browser (so users could mix and match and see the greatness of objects working in the environment), I think we would have gone a long way to starting this re-revolution. And, nothing is stopping us from creating new features that would be a boon to productivity. Just think of the cool things people could do if the basic building blocks (and examples of how to utilize them) were present in squeak? They may do things with email and browsing that we never thought of. And, we would be teaching them the power of the environment.
Maybe this is a wild idea. But, I actually believe this has been already cited - most likely in this mailing list. It seems extremely doable. There's nothing technically hard about it. It's more of a coordination issue and, of course, a time issue (maybe we can come up with something to help the time issue for developers.)
Crazy idea? Is it worth trying to get some people excited about this idea and creating some of these modules? Maybe you have a better idea to show people the power of the object and a real workable dynabook?
How could we get this rolling? A dedicated team? I can certainly provide time for the management of the project(s).
what do you think?
Brad, you read my mind! IMHO Squeak does not cater for the "casual user" or anyone not immediately interested in programming. There is an unhealthy bias in the community towards improving the guts of Squeak while the needs of casual/non-programming users are almost completely ignored.
I like your list of applications but would like to suggest these:
- A web browser where elements of the page can be dragged out into user defined pages and retain their context. User page/s may then be available for browsing by friends.
- Media management for music, photo's and video's.
- Multi-mode Communications: something that makes it easy say to grab email/phone messages/ home web cam images, etc, and route to different formats/channels.
- Social networking tools
I think the above just about encapsulates what most people are up to and/or interested in doing. Combined with a graphical method of routing data between objects (Connectors/Fabrik-like but in a way that delays having to tackle Smalltalk until requirement demand it) I believe this would entice a lot of new users and that a fair percentage would then happily go on to investigate the rest of the environment. And even if they don't, this type of effort can only help to increase Squeak/Smalltalk visibility.
I'd happily join any team effort but at the moment I am still at the stage where I even struggle to find explicit information on Morphs, Players, Costumes and the like :-(
That would be nice :)
- Media management for music, photo's and video's.
I 'd like either a good files management system... maybe tagging files/directory on the computer and why not on remote places...
I've always liked the small size of squeak seeing all its capabilities... If we could have neat applications, ready to use for people not knowing squeak, that would be excellent... ;)
Cédrick
On Jan 31, 2007, at 3:05 AM, Brad Fuller wrote:
<snip/>
I believe the top applications used today, in popularity order, are:
- Email (including calendaring)
- Web
- Word Processing
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation
Maybe I missed something, or maybe I'm wrong -- this is off the top of my head. Sounds right, though. (4 of these apps are in the MS Office product and 3 in the OpenOffice package.)
If we could concentrate on the first two that included critical modules that provided the popular features of an email app and a web browser (so users could mix and match and see the greatness of objects working in the environment), I think we would have gone a long way to starting this re-revolution. And, nothing is stopping us from creating new features that would be a boon to productivity. Just think of the cool things people could do if the basic building blocks (and examples of how to utilize them) were present in squeak? They may do things with email and browsing that we never thought of. And, we would be teaching them the power of the environment.
During my summertalk[1], I started working on a web based iCalendar application in Squeak, using Seaside, Scriptaculous and the ical model and exporters/importers. The application is working, I just finished adding a todo list and fixed a few bugs. It's not perfect, but it's a first step I think. There is some work being done on recurrence rules also, and I hope we can merge them to get an icalendar application that respects the RFC and offers *much more* than the existing applications (google calendar, ical, sunbird aka mozilla calendar ...). I'd be happy to help to make a non-web interface for the icalendar, but I couldn't do it on my own, lack of time to do it, and lack of time to learn and play with Morphic.
I think that by offering web applications that possess similar features that well known (but not installable) web application -I'm thinking of google calendar for example, that people can't install on a local server, as opposed to SummerTime (it's the name of my app)- we could have users in : companies, schools, universities ... that want to be able to use such technologies but don't want to use a public service.
But that isn't using squeak for the user, it's using squeak like people install python or java on their server to run this or that application. Unless we build a GUI in Squeak , instead of using only seaside apps.
One thing I would find fun to both code and use, is a drop bag where you can drop anything in your OS. For example a bag on the desktop (let's call it a dock), where you can store applications, files, documents, webpages, images, network volumes, menus, widgets ... It's something Apple has already started with the dock in OSX, but imo they haven't pushed it all the way... a bag where you can store anything, as long as it's an object :) It would probably require a lot of interaction with the OS, making it less portable (or at least less easily portable). just an idea.
Yann
[1] http://www.squeaksource.com/iCalSummerTalk.html
Maybe this is a wild idea. But, I actually believe this has been already cited - most likely in this mailing list. It seems extremely doable. There's nothing technically hard about it. It's more of a coordination issue and, of course, a time issue (maybe we can come up with something to help the time issue for developers.)
Crazy idea? Is it worth trying to get some people excited about this idea and creating some of these modules? Maybe you have a better idea to show people the power of the object and a real workable dynabook?
How could we get this rolling? A dedicated team? I can certainly provide time for the management of the project(s).
what do you think?
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
El 1/31/07 9:48 AM, "Yann Monclair" yann@monclair.info escribió:
For example a bag on the desktop (let's call it a dock), where you can store applications, files, documents, webpages, images, network volumes, menus, widgets ... It's something Apple has already started with the dock in OSX, but imo they haven't pushed it all the way... a bag where you can store anything, as long as it's an object :)
You could made a alias to any file or app in Mac for eras, not start with OS X.
I imagine what Xerox Parc could have some of this , but not sure, any could tell ?
Edgar
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I haven't looked at your GUI code, but are you using Magritte? If so, you are closer to running in Morphic then you think. :)
From: Yann Monclair yann@monclair.info Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:48:27 +0100
On Jan 31, 2007, at 3:05 AM, Brad Fuller wrote:
<snip/>
I believe the top applications used today, in popularity order, are:
- Email (including calendaring)
- Web
- Word Processing
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation
Maybe I missed something, or maybe I'm wrong -- this is off the top of my head. Sounds right, though. (4 of these apps are in the MS Office product and 3 in the OpenOffice package.)
If we could concentrate on the first two that included critical modules that provided the popular features of an email app and a web browser (so users could mix and match and see the greatness of objects working in the environment), I think we would have gone a long way to starting this re-revolution. And, nothing is stopping us from creating new features that would be a boon to productivity. Just think of the cool things people could do if the basic building blocks (and examples of how to utilize them) were present in squeak? They may do things with email and browsing that we never thought of. And, we would be teaching them the power of the environment.
During my summertalk[1], I started working on a web based iCalendar application in Squeak, using Seaside, Scriptaculous and the ical model and exporters/importers. The application is working, I just finished adding a todo list and fixed a few bugs. It's not perfect, but it's a first step I think. There is some work being done on recurrence rules also, and I hope we can merge them to get an icalendar application that respects the RFC and offers *much more* than the existing applications (google calendar, ical, sunbird aka mozilla calendar ...). I'd be happy to help to make a non-web interface for the icalendar, but I couldn't do it on my own, lack of time to do it, and lack of time to learn and play with Morphic.
I think that by offering web applications that possess similar features that well known (but not installable) web application -I'm thinking of google calendar for example, that people can't install on a local server, as opposed to SummerTime (it's the name of my app)- we could have users in : companies, schools, universities ... that want to be able to use such technologies but don't want to use a public service.
But that isn't using squeak for the user, it's using squeak like people install python or java on their server to run this or that application. Unless we build a GUI in Squeak , instead of using only seaside apps.
One thing I would find fun to both code and use, is a drop bag where you can drop anything in your OS. For example a bag on the desktop (let's call it a dock), where you can store applications, files, documents, webpages, images, network volumes, menus, widgets ... It's something Apple has already started with the dock in OSX, but imo they haven't pushed it all the way... a bag where you can store anything, as long as it's an object :) It would probably require a lot of interaction with the OS, making it less portable (or at least less easily portable). just an idea.
Yann
[1] http://www.squeaksource.com/iCalSummerTalk.html
Maybe this is a wild idea. But, I actually believe this has been already cited - most likely in this mailing list. It seems extremely doable. There's nothing technically hard about it. It's more of a coordination issue and, of course, a time issue (maybe we can come up with something to help the time issue for developers.)
Crazy idea? Is it worth trying to get some people excited about this idea and creating some of these modules? Maybe you have a better idea to show people the power of the object and a real workable dynabook?
How could we get this rolling? A dedicated team? I can certainly provide time for the management of the project(s).
what do you think?
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
_________________________________________________________________ Laugh, share and connect with Windows Live Messenger http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://ima...
I don't use magritte, I think I will try to switch to magritte for the editors, but I'm not sure it would be suited for the rest of the app.
Yann
J J wrote:
I haven't looked at your GUI code, but are you using Magritte? If so, you are closer to running in Morphic then you think. :)
From: Yann Monclair yann@monclair.info Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:48:27 +0100
On Jan 31, 2007, at 3:05 AM, Brad Fuller wrote:
<snip/>
I believe the top applications used today, in popularity order, are:
- Email (including calendaring)
- Web
- Word Processing
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation
Maybe I missed something, or maybe I'm wrong -- this is off the top of my head. Sounds right, though. (4 of these apps are in the MS Office product and 3 in the OpenOffice package.)
If we could concentrate on the first two that included critical modules that provided the popular features of an email app and a web browser (so users could mix and match and see the greatness of objects working in the environment), I think we would have gone a long way to starting this re-revolution. And, nothing is stopping us from creating new features that would be a boon to productivity. Just think of the cool things people could do if the basic building blocks (and examples of how to utilize them) were present in squeak? They may do things with email and browsing that we never thought of. And, we would be teaching them the power of the environment.
During my summertalk[1], I started working on a web based iCalendar application in Squeak, using Seaside, Scriptaculous and the ical model and exporters/importers. The application is working, I just finished adding a todo list and fixed a few bugs. It's not perfect, but it's a first step I think. There is some work being done on recurrence rules also, and I hope we can merge them to get an icalendar application that respects the RFC and offers *much more* than the existing applications (google calendar, ical, sunbird aka mozilla calendar ...). I'd be happy to help to make a non-web interface for the icalendar, but I couldn't do it on my own, lack of time to do it, and lack of time to learn and play with Morphic.
I think that by offering web applications that possess similar features that well known (but not installable) web application -I'm thinking of google calendar for example, that people can't install on a local server, as opposed to SummerTime (it's the name of my app)- we could have users in : companies, schools, universities ... that want to be able to use such technologies but don't want to use a public service.
But that isn't using squeak for the user, it's using squeak like people install python or java on their server to run this or that application. Unless we build a GUI in Squeak , instead of using only seaside apps.
One thing I would find fun to both code and use, is a drop bag where you can drop anything in your OS. For example a bag on the desktop (let's call it a dock), where you can store applications, files, documents, webpages, images, network volumes, menus, widgets ... It's something Apple has already started with the dock in OSX, but imo they haven't pushed it all the way... a bag where you can store anything, as long as it's an object :) It would probably require a lot of interaction with the OS, making it less portable (or at least less easily portable). just an idea.
Yann
[1] http://www.squeaksource.com/iCalSummerTalk.html
Maybe this is a wild idea. But, I actually believe this has been already cited - most likely in this mailing list. It seems extremely doable. There's nothing technically hard about it. It's more of a coordination issue and, of course, a time issue (maybe we can come up with something to help the time issue for developers.)
Crazy idea? Is it worth trying to get some people excited about this idea and creating some of these modules? Maybe you have a better idea to show people the power of the object and a real workable dynabook?
How could we get this rolling? A dedicated team? I can certainly provide time for the management of the project(s).
what do you think?
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
Laugh, share and connect with Windows Live Messenger http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://ima...
Celeste is an e-mail reader. Scamper is a web browser. Both need improvement before they are killer apps, though I think some people ues Celeste every day. See http://map.squeak.org
Croquet is in some ways a radical rethinking of what the web could be like. Sophie is very definitely a radical rethinking of what a book could be like. You should take a look at those projects.
Squeak is more likely to attract people by doing something unique like Croquet or Sophie than by trying to compete with the rest of the world with e-mail and web browsing. But, if you can get people to make Celeste or Scamper good enough that a lot of people use them every day, more power to you!
-Ralph
Ralph Johnson wrote:
Celeste is an e-mail reader. Scamper is a web browser. Both need improvement before they are killer apps, though I think some people ues Celeste every day. See http://map.squeak.org
Croquet is in some ways a radical rethinking of what the web could be like. Sophie is very definitely a radical rethinking of what a book could be like. You should take a look at those projects.
Squeak is more likely to attract people by doing something unique like Croquet or Sophie than by trying to compete with the rest of the world with e-mail and web browsing. But, if you can get people to make Celeste or Scamper good enough that a lot of people use them every day, more power to you!
Thanks all for your comments.
I completely agree that competition with today's email and browser apps would be tough considering the competition and the ingrained usage and preferences of users. I was only thinking of the best way to motivate new users to squeak with something they already understand but with much cooler features.
Another way is to create a squeak app that satisfies an unfulfilled user need but make it extremely easy to use (so they don't give up because it's "too radical".) I like this approach better, but that requires more brain power on the frontend of the squeak community.
So, it came down to a decision of what could be successful.
There's nothing wrong, though, in doing both, like Yann's idea of the multipurpose bag that eliminates the usage of a filesystem or Derek's multimedia management system or social networking tools coupled with Scamper and Celeste completion.
Hi all,
I'm going chime in with my $0.02 here, for what it's worth. I'm positive that Brad is on the right track here. But it seems to me, being that Smalltalk and hence Squeak is such a radical approach to computing, that the ideas behind the applications we're considering here change completely within the context of this platform. I know that no one's suggesting this, but I would hate to have the team put their blood, sweat, and tears into replicating the same use-paradigm within which these applications normally manifest themselves on their current technology stacks. That is to say, what Squeak/Smalltalk is to computing, it's applications should be to their problem domain. I'm sure those are high standards, but that is just what will make this work so well. We should not be afraid to make paradigmatic improvements to the idea of an email application, say, or a word-processor, or a calendaring application. IMHO, it would would only be in keeping with the spirit of the Dynabook and Squeak itself.
That being said, it's a wonderful idea we're discussing. I'm certainly not saying that I have any genius ideas, but this group as a whole, I think, could make some great improvements.
Cheers, Michael
On 1/31/07, Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com wrote:
Ralph Johnson wrote:
Celeste is an e-mail reader. Scamper is a web browser. Both need improvement before they are killer apps, though I think some people ues Celeste every day. See http://map.squeak.org
Croquet is in some ways a radical rethinking of what the web could be like. Sophie is very definitely a radical rethinking of what a book could be like. You should take a look at those projects.
Squeak is more likely to attract people by doing something unique like Croquet or Sophie than by trying to compete with the rest of the world with e-mail and web browsing. But, if you can get people to make Celeste or Scamper good enough that a lot of people use them every day, more power to you!
Thanks all for your comments.
I completely agree that competition with today's email and browser apps would be tough considering the competition and the ingrained usage and preferences of users. I was only thinking of the best way to motivate new users to squeak with something they already understand but with much cooler features.
Another way is to create a squeak app that satisfies an unfulfilled user need but make it extremely easy to use (so they don't give up because it's "too radical".) I like this approach better, but that requires more brain power on the frontend of the squeak community.
So, it came down to a decision of what could be successful.
There's nothing wrong, though, in doing both, like Yann's idea of the multipurpose bag that eliminates the usage of a filesystem or Derek's multimedia management system or social networking tools coupled with Scamper and Celeste completion.
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
mike clemow wrote:
Hi all,
I'm going chime in with my $0.02 here, for what it's worth. I'm positive that Brad is on the right track here. But it seems to me, being that Smalltalk and hence Squeak is such a radical approach to computing, that the ideas behind the applications we're considering here change completely within the context of this platform. I know that no one's suggesting this, but I would hate to have the team put their blood, sweat, and tears into replicating the same use-paradigm within which these applications normally manifest themselves on their current technology stacks. That is to say, what Squeak/Smalltalk is to computing, it's applications should be to their problem domain. I'm sure those are high standards, but that is just what will make this work so well. We should not be afraid to make paradigmatic improvements to the idea of an email application, say, or a word-processor, or a calendaring application. IMHO, it would would only be in keeping with the spirit of the Dynabook and Squeak itself.
Exactly.
Maybe it shouldn't be called email or a web browser, because these evoke images of current functionality, and that's not what I'm after. Maybe think of the email app as a "time-shifted correspondence object engine". And do more than text, but embed squeak objects. Sure, it could read standard ASCII text (and html, since scamper would be improved.) The transportation of morphic objects within a squeak "email", for example, would be easy since a lot of this is already set up in squeak. You could still correspond with others in standard email, but if both were using the new improved Celeste, all kinds of things are possible. I really haven't thought about it, this is just off the tip of my fingers.
The only thing I cringe about a squeak web browser is that web browsing is so backwards - it's just a slightly better static paper magazine page. Alternatively, it would be great to have a seaside browser within squeak. A browser that could browse typical web pages with no problem but when it came across a seaside site, would have additional squeak features that wouldn't be available in your standard browser such as Firefox. These features could increase the popularity of both seaside and squeak.
And if these two engines were partitioned well within squeak, you could utilize them together.
That being said, it's a wonderful idea we're discussing. I'm certainly not saying that I have any genius ideas, but this group as a whole, I think, could make some great improvements.
Cheers, Michael
On 1/31/07, Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com wrote:
Ralph Johnson wrote:
Celeste is an e-mail reader. Scamper is a web browser. Both need improvement before they are killer apps, though I think some people ues Celeste every day. See http://map.squeak.org
Croquet is in some ways a radical rethinking of what the web could be like. Sophie is very definitely a radical rethinking of what a book could be like. You should take a look at those projects.
Squeak is more likely to attract people by doing something unique like Croquet or Sophie than by trying to compete with the rest of the world with e-mail and web browsing. But, if you can get people to make Celeste or Scamper good enough that a lot of people use them every day, more power to you!
Thanks all for your comments.
I completely agree that competition with today's email and browser apps would be tough considering the competition and the ingrained usage and preferences of users. I was only thinking of the best way to motivate new users to squeak with something they already understand but with much cooler features.
Another way is to create a squeak app that satisfies an unfulfilled user need but make it extremely easy to use (so they don't give up because it's "too radical".) I like this approach better, but that requires more brain power on the frontend of the squeak community.
So, it came down to a decision of what could be successful.
There's nothing wrong, though, in doing both, like Yann's idea of the multipurpose bag that eliminates the usage of a filesystem or Derek's multimedia management system or social networking tools coupled with Scamper and Celeste completion.
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
Hi Brad,
It sounds to me (and appologize if I am guessing wrong) is that your goal is to make Squeak more wide spread, and bring underlying ideas into wider use and awarness. My theory is for a software product to achieve that is to: - attract more users or - atract more developers and I think the recent history (Java, Microsoft's tools, Ruby) shows that attracting more developers is the way to do it. Also it may be that creating web browsers, email and office suites is the old territory, also, penetration against established products would be very difficult. I am not saying let us not do it, just speculating on options. I feel that for Squeak its power is in unchartered territories, things like Croquet and Tinlizzie (which I understand is generally direction of future eToys-like system).
I think currently Squeak, mostly via eToys, is one of the very few great tools for children and non-developers which is great, but I would wish there are more developers attracted to Squeak. I read recently that if all the Squeak developers are gone, there will be noone developing the tools for kids. Going back for a minute to "succeed via attracting more developers", obviously if more developers can make some of their living from Squeak, that would be great. Also, for _new_ developers, it seems that the development environment fell behind it's apprentices, tools like KDevelop, Eclipse, Netbeans are far more pleasant and (cough) productive (I am coming from that direction, so cannot compare objectively, but feel that is the case). I guess overall I am trying to say better developer tools and PR may be a shorter way for Squeak promotion, but that does not mean the next great killer app could not be a web browser :) .
Milan
On 2007 January 30 21:05, Brad Fuller wrote:
All,
I've been wondering how to show the power of objects and the power of an environment like smalltalk to everyday users. Probably the best way is to provide features within the environment that they can really use every day - right out of the box. The idea is secondary to my (motivated, but not much action) desire to make Squeak available and usable to everyday users.
Today, popular applications are vertical and on disparate OSs. There are some applications that talk to one another using different forms of communication, depending on the OS. Some mainstream type apps are cross platform - like firefox, Thunderbird. But, this bandaid is not the vision Alan, Dan, and the rest of the Xerox PARC Learning team had for the personal computer and dynabook. I'm sure they can be improved, but I really like their ideas. I know I'm preaching to the choir!
It would be nice to reverse the trend, or at the very least provide a usable alternative. The world missed a great opportunity in the early 80s. Today people really can't customize their environment to their needs - and the dynabook vision was just that. I want to see that work.
If the squeak community could provide leadership by creating and producing significant features that most people need today, we might get the ball rolling for users to start using squeak and for developers to see the richness of the environment - and thus start the development cycle to provide more features for everyday users. (apps like seaside are doing significant work in this area for developers.)
I believe the top applications used today, in popularity order, are:
- Email (including calendaring)
- Web
- Word Processing
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation
Maybe I missed something, or maybe I'm wrong -- this is off the top of my head. Sounds right, though. (4 of these apps are in the MS Office product and 3 in the OpenOffice package.)
If we could concentrate on the first two that included critical modules that provided the popular features of an email app and a web browser (so users could mix and match and see the greatness of objects working in the environment), I think we would have gone a long way to starting this re-revolution. And, nothing is stopping us from creating new features that would be a boon to productivity. Just think of the cool things people could do if the basic building blocks (and examples of how to utilize them) were present in squeak? They may do things with email and browsing that we never thought of. And, we would be teaching them the power of the environment.
Maybe this is a wild idea. But, I actually believe this has been already cited - most likely in this mailing list. It seems extremely doable. There's nothing technically hard about it. It's more of a coordination issue and, of course, a time issue (maybe we can come up with something to help the time issue for developers.)
Crazy idea? Is it worth trying to get some people excited about this idea and creating some of these modules? Maybe you have a better idea to show people the power of the object and a real workable dynabook?
How could we get this rolling? A dedicated team? I can certainly provide time for the management of the project(s).
what do you think?
LOL, this has been happening to me a lot lately. This is looking exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in my first reply and I swear I have never heard of it before today: http://www.zoho.com/notebook/
I guess you could say that where we use "DoIt" these guys use "DoneIt" (joke, bad taste but I couldn't resist)
Derek O'Connell wrote:
LOL, this has been happening to me a lot lately. This is looking exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in my first reply and I swear I have never heard of it before today: http://www.zoho.com/notebook/
I guess you could say that where we use "DoIt" these guys use "DoneIt" (joke, bad taste but I couldn't resist)
(and it looks like it's only for windows.)
Regarding "attracting more developers": before appearing critical I'd like to say that *I see* the potential in Squeak/Smalltalk but I'm not sure it is immediately apparent to many others (meaning those yet to encounter Squeak/Smalltalk). This is not to say I have any sort of special insight or anything but because of years of relying on other developers to one extent or another it is refreshing to work in an environment where each new nugget of learning contributes to my knowledge of the *total* environment. There's no technology barrier at which point I have to re-tool to gain deeper control of the environment (beyond the obvious topic of customising the VM but even this would be transitory (do it then just use it)). My only regret is that I didn't "discover" it years ago. I'm also grateful that experienced developers continue to improve Squeak but... (you knew it was coming :-) )...
Squeak/Smalltalk has been around for years with I guess large numbers of interested developers at one time or another but still has almost *ZERO* mindshare in the general computer using population and, I would also guess, close to zero in those that can or want to program. This, IMHO, is not simply a pubilicity problem, it's a presentation problem. Framed crudely: Squeak/Smalltalk *is* a great development environment but a dire *user* environment. Yes, Morphic is way cool but most user oriented "applications" are mashed up with non-application elements and many an answer to newbies questions begin with "Open up a workspace, type "blah new openInWorld", right-click, select "DoIt"... I mean, COME ON! What century are we in? I say this somewhat tounge-in-cheek because if you have convinced a newbie to do this then you can immediately claim that they have written and executed their first Smalltalk program ("there, that wasn't hard was it?" LOL).
So to get specific: should the focus be on attracting more developers or more "casual" users, and are better development tools needed or more end-user applications? In truth there is no correct answer and it is a bit of a chicken-n-egg situation. Any answer depends on the state of affairs at the time it is given. Today there are developers (I'm not sure how many) but I argue that there are *no* casual users and that end-user applications are needed. If the question is "who cares about casual users?" then I say that these, not developers, are future life-blood of Squeak/Smalltalk development, they will generate the demand that ensures Squeak/Smalltalk continues to exist and improve. I could also question the role of developers without end-users and postulate that if there were more end-users today then there would also be jobs for Smalltalk developers... and everyone would be happy :-P
A few final points:
- I pay homage to EToys, Seaside, Scratch, Sophie etc but none of these are what I would class as In-Squeak user-based applications. Croquet of course offers potential but I would say not for general consumption until high speed comms and 3D hw acceleration become so standard that suppliers/manufacturers list them in their basic specs (if only people would not dream to buy machines without hw 3D!)
- I recognise the wealth of code in the image but question the accessibility of this to casual users or even wanna-be programmers. In the case of the former presentation is very much key, for the latter the amorphousness of Smalltalk interfaces lack the "sign-posts" provided by well-documented API's in other environments.
- Squeak is an ideal place to challenge peoples concepts of what a GUI is and what they should be able to with it. A much better environment for *any* sort of experimentation than say "Proce55ing". I have a few ideas that I'd like to throw into the pot, depending on what direction Brad takes this conversation.
- To the hardcore Smalltalk developers: despite any apparent criticisms above, I LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU! Carry on coding dudes! :-)
Hi all, I'm new in this list, at least as a writer... I'd been reading the posts for awhile and I'm very interested in squeak development... and yes, I would like to see squeak all around the world, not being used just for a few developers. I totally agree with Milan, the key is to atract more developers to Squeak world... and through them to the managers :) Ok, then... this days, many software applications are web applications. In fact, it has been several years since I develop a "normal" application (of course, It's just my life, but I think many programmers could say the same), so, I really believe that Seaside is the killer framework for web applications... and I think throug Seaside (and developing new tools and components to harness it ) we can "conquer the web". Another thinks I think we need: a) better ORMs to propietary data bases, particularly Oracle and MSSQL: ODBC is not really a good way to do this, because our applications get tied to Windows. b) a better system to distribute objects (rST?), or better: a way to connect images running so we can cluster web applications in the easy way.
Thats my 2 cents.
Cheers, Esteban
pd: I'm very sorry if this is no news or not interesting for the members of the list... I'm new and don't know older debates. ppd: I know... my english sucks, so, I'm sorry for that to.
On 2/1/07, Derek O'Connell doconnel@gmail.com wrote:
Regarding "attracting more developers": before appearing critical I'd like to say that *I see* the potential in Squeak/Smalltalk but I'm not sure it is immediately apparent to many others (meaning those yet to encounter Squeak/Smalltalk). This is not to say I have any sort of special insight or anything but because of years of relying on other developers to one extent or another it is refreshing to work in an environment where each new nugget of learning contributes to my knowledge of the *total* environment. There's no technology barrier at which point I have to re-tool to gain deeper control of the environment (beyond the obvious topic of customising the VM but even this would be transitory (do it then just use it)). My only regret is that I didn't "discover" it years ago. I'm also grateful that experienced developers continue to improve Squeak but... (you knew it was coming :-) )...
Squeak/Smalltalk has been around for years with I guess large numbers of interested developers at one time or another but still has almost *ZERO* mindshare in the general computer using population and, I would also guess, close to zero in those that can or want to program. This, IMHO, is not simply a pubilicity problem, it's a presentation problem. Framed crudely: Squeak/Smalltalk *is* a great development environment but a dire *user* environment. Yes, Morphic is way cool but most user oriented "applications" are mashed up with non-application elements and many an answer to newbies questions begin with "Open up a workspace, type "blah new openInWorld", right-click, select "DoIt"... I mean, COME ON! What century are we in? I say this somewhat tounge-in-cheek because if you have convinced a newbie to do this then you can immediately claim that they have written and executed their first Smalltalk program ("there, that wasn't hard was it?" LOL).
So to get specific: should the focus be on attracting more developers or more "casual" users, and are better development tools needed or more end-user applications? In truth there is no correct answer and it is a bit of a chicken-n-egg situation. Any answer depends on the state of affairs at the time it is given. Today there are developers (I'm not sure how many) but I argue that there are *no* casual users and that end-user applications are needed. If the question is "who cares about casual users?" then I say that these, not developers, are future life-blood of Squeak/Smalltalk development, they will generate the demand that ensures Squeak/Smalltalk continues to exist and improve. I could also question the role of developers without end-users and postulate that if there were more end-users today then there would also be jobs for Smalltalk developers... and everyone would be happy :-P
A few final points:
- I pay homage to EToys, Seaside, Scratch, Sophie etc but none of
these are what I would class as In-Squeak user-based applications. Croquet of course offers potential but I would say not for general consumption until high speed comms and 3D hw acceleration become so standard that suppliers/manufacturers list them in their basic specs (if only people would not dream to buy machines without hw 3D!)
- I recognise the wealth of code in the image but question the
accessibility of this to casual users or even wanna-be programmers. In the case of the former presentation is very much key, for the latter the amorphousness of Smalltalk interfaces lack the "sign-posts" provided by well-documented API's in other environments.
- Squeak is an ideal place to challenge peoples concepts of what a GUI
is and what they should be able to with it. A much better environment for *any* sort of experimentation than say "Proce55ing". I have a few ideas that I'd like to throw into the pot, depending on what direction Brad takes this conversation.
- To the hardcore Smalltalk developers: despite any apparent
criticisms above, I LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU! Carry on coding dudes! :-)
From: "Esteban Lorenzano" estebanlm@gmail.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 11:13:57 -0300
a) better ORMs to propietary data bases, particularly Oracle and MSSQL: ODBC is not really a good way to do this, because our applications get tied to Windows.
It has a great ORM (Glorp), it just needs drivers to some of these databases.
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Hi Derek,
I should mark this OT, or ask Ken to setup squeak-advocacy list. Anyway, I should say that I agree with much what you said, considering the difference how I'd describe a user vs. developer. A few comments on it inline...
On 2007 February 1 05:38, Derek O'Connell wrote:
Regarding "attracting more developers": before appearing critical I'd like to say that *I see* the potential in Squeak/Smalltalk but I'm not sure it is immediately apparent to many others (meaning those yet to encounter Squeak/Smalltalk). This is not to say I have any sort of special insight or anything but because of years of relying on other developers to one extent or another it is refreshing to work in an environment where each new nugget of learning contributes to my knowledge of the *total* environment. There's no technology barrier at which point I have to re-tool to gain deeper control of the environment (beyond the obvious topic of customising the VM but even this would be transitory (do it then just use it)). My only regret is that I didn't "discover" it years ago. I'm also grateful that experienced developers continue to improve Squeak but... (you knew it was coming :-) )...
Squeak/Smalltalk has been around for years with I guess large numbers of interested developers at one time or another but still has almost *ZERO* mindshare in the general computer using population and, I would also guess, close to zero in those that can or want to program. This, IMHO, is not simply a pubilicity problem, it's a presentation problem. Framed crudely: Squeak/Smalltalk *is* a great development environment but a dire *user* environment. Yes, Morphic is way cool but most user oriented "applications" are mashed up with non-application elements and many an answer to newbies questions begin with "Open up a workspace, type "blah new openInWorld", right-click, select "DoIt"... I mean, COME ON! What century are we in? I say this somewhat tounge-in-cheek because if you have convinced a newbie to do this then you can immediately claim that they have written and executed their first Smalltalk program ("there, that wasn't hard was it?" LOL).
By "user" I ment a person using a application, such as web browser or office suite, which is what started the debate. I probably was not clear even for myself but by developer I ment anyone using Squeak for developement or playing, or simply interacting with it. From this perspective, what you are complaining about (rightly!) is in the _developer_ scope, not _user_ scope. I could write much about Squeak (Morpic) UI feeling awfully inconsistent , illogical and complicated (to me at least), so just one example: Line up 4 (partly overlaping) elements:a Workspace window, a Morphic Project Window, a Pinned Menu and a Book Morph. Each of them behave completely differently in terms of a) how to bring them to front and b) how to pick them up and move. (thanks for the halo that is the only consistent interaction!) For new developers (ok, users, in your view) this must be a complete turn off. the complexity of menus is another thing. I am not sure there is a way to "fix" this, as it would require to define some UI rules first, I am thinking that using something like Tweak is probably the way out of it.
So to get specific: should the focus be on attracting more developers or more "casual" users, and are better development tools needed or more end-user applications? In truth there is no correct answer and it is a bit of a chicken-n-egg situation.
yes i agree completely. What I am not sure about (but will have no problem to be wrong, and not discouraging ) is whether developing large scale end user applications that exist today (and have many man-years development invested in them), is a practical way to gain user base.
Milan
Any answer depends on the state of affairs at the time it is given. Today there are developers (I'm not sure how many) but I argue that there are *no* casual users and that end-user applications are needed. If the question is "who cares about casual users?" then I say that these, not developers, are future life-blood of Squeak/Smalltalk development, they will generate the demand that ensures Squeak/Smalltalk continues to exist and improve. I could also question the role of developers without end-users and postulate that if there were more end-users today then there would also be jobs for Smalltalk developers... and everyone would be happy
:-P
A few final points:
- I pay homage to EToys, Seaside, Scratch, Sophie etc but none of
these are what I would class as In-Squeak user-based applications. Croquet of course offers potential but I would say not for general consumption until high speed comms and 3D hw acceleration become so standard that suppliers/manufacturers list them in their basic specs (if only people would not dream to buy machines without hw 3D!)
- I recognise the wealth of code in the image but question the
accessibility of this to casual users or even wanna-be programmers. In the case of the former presentation is very much key, for the latter the amorphousness of Smalltalk interfaces lack the "sign-posts" provided by well-documented API's in other environments.
- Squeak is an ideal place to challenge peoples concepts of what a GUI
is and what they should be able to with it. A much better environment for *any* sort of experimentation than say "Proce55ing". I have a few ideas that I'd like to throw into the pot, depending on what direction Brad takes this conversation.
- To the hardcore Smalltalk developers: despite any apparent
criticisms above, I LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU! Carry on coding dudes! :-)
yes i agree completely. What I am not sure about (but will have no problem to be wrong, and not discouraging ) is whether developing large scale end user applications that exist today (and have many man-years development invested in them), is a practical way to gain user base.
Milan
Milan, I agree, there is no point *just* recreating what has already been done, and in most cases done very well. It would also be a very risky exercise, I'd say "doomed to fail". Hopefully I can clarify my position but first I'm going to refer anyone reading this back to Brad's original post, otherwise we could be in danger of playing Chinese Whispers, and make a few points upfront...
- Best to leave this thread on the devs list for now. We need their buy-in since who else will be implementing whatever emerges from this discussion? If there is a more appropriate forum then ok but AFAIK there is no distinction between dev's focused on fundamental aspects of Squeak/Smalltalk and any dev's that may be mainly focused on the "user experience". Getting circular here since this is the main topic of this thread no? :-)
- I'm not complaining about Morphic, quite the reverse, although of course there are areas that can be improved. In some/most cases though it is not a Morphic issue but a presentation issue, eg, menu layout/usage-policy.
- I'm going to be unashamedly dogmatic in my definition of a "user" vs "developer". My definition of "user" is someone who may, quite rightly, castrate you if you even dare to mention "coding". I can't think of a better way to make this point more explicit :-) Well, maybe, just try getting your girlfriend/ mother/ grandparent/ CEO to write a Smalltalk program, you'll soon feel like you have been castrated :-))))
- A "casual" user is one that does not even expect to have to adapt to a new environment, simply expects paradigms found elsewhere. Unfortunately that typically means what they find in MS Windows but I don't see this as unreasonable nor something that isn't already do-able with what exists in Morphic. It's just that it may not done very well and/or consistently as your example makes clear.
- Of course we still hope to make converts of everyone but, if I understand Brad's motivation correctly, we can "hope" but not "expect" (this should be a guiding principle).
- Personally I don't need convincing that Squeak lacks "something" from the perspective of a user and would benefit by attracting more ordinary users, but I also don't think the Squeak community in general can admit it, or is willing to admit, or in some cases even care. More fundamentally, why should they care if their interest is CS specific or driven by personal requirements? The challenge underpinning this particular discussion is to convince the community that attracting/serving ordinary users would benefit everyone! It appears self-evident to me but maybe it would be useful debate this aspect further (I may have expanded on this topic below but this reply is already looking too long, I have but one life and predicting the future is an uncertain business :-) ). Enough to say ordinary users surprise and challenge and get "real" value from software... and if that's not enough then maybe the idea that more users = more chance of getting paid to do what you like to do will, which I assume is Squeak/Smalltalk development (personally I'd rather get paid to snowboard but life sucks so I'd settle for getting paid to develop (but only using Squeak/Smalltalk)).
- I am reminded of the essay "Cult of the Dead" (http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2950) and muse on the ironic twist that "dead" is exactly how Squeak must look from outside this community. If fact it did to me before my curiosity got the best of me.
Now, anyone reading this may be thinking that all the above is my reply and that this is my concluding paragraph? Sorry to disappoint you but I'm just beginning (lol).
Assuming for now as fact that we *want* to attract more users, ie, more casual/ordinary users, that this is a *Good Thing*, that large app's are impractical/risky... what to do? We could do endless comparisons such as RoR vs Seaside, SL vs Croquet and now Zoho-Notebook vs Sophie, etc, and/or we could promote-like-hell all the potential benefits users could have IF ONLY THEY WOULD LEARN SMALLTALK, GRRRRRRR! (joke, just to keep the mood light). Comparisons happen naturally anyway and promotion is now being formed into a concerted effort and while this is also good neither tackles the central issue of what would make an *ordinary* user use Squeak instead of any other more focused, better developed, better presented, better... well just *better* applications out there... and we may as well admit there/they *are* many and they increase almost daily. Time to pack up and go home... I grunt, throw all my stuff in my bag, shrug on my coat and make for the door... but half way through I pause and...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that I can categorise 99% of ordinary and not-so ordinary users daily computer activity in two words, and I don't even know 99.99999'% of those users! Drum roll....."Breaking Barriers" (BB). You name it and I'll take bets that it falls under the BB heading. Yeah, ok, come up with a broad enough classification and this trick leaves the audience unimpressed and heading for the door. I could have equally said "Human Things" in which case I would hold the door open for you AND give a refund as you leave... but I didn't so now you have to stay in your seat and hope it was worth it (LOL (with an evil twist)).
I could set about creating a formal-ish definition of BB but I'm sure with a moments thought most people would agree with me so I aim to spare you this pain. However, I will offer some examples so I can't be accused of dodging the issue and so others will have concrete examples with which to crush me if they feel I am way off the mark. First close to home and very recently: Croquet provides portals with a border and icons to open/close etc... new user immediately wants to lose the border and icons, make portals large so that they are effectively invisible, transparent... borderless... barrierless (I deserve a point for this example surely!). The web breaks many barriers, not least that preventing the ordinary person from publishing/disseminating/retrieving information. Website creators put great effort into page design... someone creates ad-blockers, someone creates GreaseMonkey effectively allowing the viewer to dictate the design and content... content can be annotated... Web2 buzzes around (as buzz-words do) promising to make all this type of thing easy-peasy... Web3 is touted as allowing the user to re-organise the *web* itself as they see fit. In other words form, content and even substate are increasingly seen as artificial barriers, to be broken down. Man, those Website creators must be fuming LOL!
On a less web-centric level, IRC usurps the lag inherent in email, VOIP usurps landline costs (very artificial by the way), P2P usurps monopolies and in general where protocols aim to restrict new protocols arise to provide freedom. Even programming itself is an activity largely rooted in the need to regain control where suppliers have attempted to artificially restricted what the user can do (think "scripting"). It's almost paradoxical that most programming, with the best of intentions, ends up producing artificial barriers under the guise of "convenience" - why is it that I'm still looking at and using a GUI severely constricted by the physical display on which it appears!!!! I mean G'DAM WHAT CENTURY ARE WE IN! (oops, I'm getting repetitive :-) ) Which brings us back to Squeak which, if you listen carefully, is saying "not me!", too right little fella, there, there.
Concluding (yes, at last): attract normal users, hope but don't expect they go further, provide user-centric app-level features, features that clearly demonstrate existing Squeak strengths (think "mash-up's" rather than full blown apps). Use "Breaking Barriers" as a theme/guide to what sort of new apps should be provided. I also suggest a friendly competition (in-house or not, preferably not, good for promotion), two stages, "ideas" then "development" (allowing crucial input from non-developers). I would also put my money where my mouth is and contribute to a prize pool.
Phew! Thanks for reading :-)
Correction: think "mashable-mash-ups", ie, using existing features but in a way that allows users to "re-wire" if you like. I imagine Connectors would play a major role in this type of thing.
Hello,
I thought that in Squeakland, the division between the _developer_ and the _user_ is supposed to be blurred, if not completely gone. I think that the only benefit to putting the time into developing applications like the ones that Brad was talking about was to exemplify the idea that this line is blurred through familiar types of applications. The kinds of people who are going to be attracted to Squeak, no matter what we do, are going to be the kinds of people who are comfortable with this blurred line. If we set a precedent for making easy the exercising of the kind of power that Squeak allows through familiar environments like email and office applications, I think that more of these people will be able to quickly understand and experience the paradigm that Squeak represents.
Derek, I think your Breaking Barriers speech (which I enjoyed reading :) ) is right on point. Although you remain safely dogmatic in your distinction between "user" and "developer," however, I think that this Barrier needs to be broken down as well. I really believe that this is in keeping with what Brad had in mind from the beginning. I'm glad that this conversation is taking place to further refine these themes.
Cheers, Mike
On 2/2/07, Milan Zimmermann milan.zimmermann@sympatico.ca wrote:
Hi Derek,
I should mark this OT, or ask Ken to setup squeak-advocacy list. Anyway, I should say that I agree with much what you said, considering the difference how I'd describe a user vs. developer. A few comments on it inline...
On 2007 February 1 05:38, Derek O'Connell wrote:
Regarding "attracting more developers": before appearing critical I'd like to say that *I see* the potential in Squeak/Smalltalk but I'm not sure it is immediately apparent to many others (meaning those yet to encounter Squeak/Smalltalk). This is not to say I have any sort of special insight or anything but because of years of relying on other developers to one extent or another it is refreshing to work in an environment where each new nugget of learning contributes to my knowledge of the *total* environment. There's no technology barrier at which point I have to re-tool to gain deeper control of the environment (beyond the obvious topic of customising the VM but even this would be transitory (do it then just use it)). My only regret is that I didn't "discover" it years ago. I'm also grateful that experienced developers continue to improve Squeak but... (you knew it was coming :-) )...
Squeak/Smalltalk has been around for years with I guess large numbers of interested developers at one time or another but still has almost *ZERO* mindshare in the general computer using population and, I would also guess, close to zero in those that can or want to program. This, IMHO, is not simply a pubilicity problem, it's a presentation problem. Framed crudely: Squeak/Smalltalk *is* a great development environment but a dire *user* environment. Yes, Morphic is way cool but most user oriented "applications" are mashed up with non-application elements and many an answer to newbies questions begin with "Open up a workspace, type "blah new openInWorld", right-click, select "DoIt"... I mean, COME ON! What century are we in? I say this somewhat tounge-in-cheek because if you have convinced a newbie to do this then you can immediately claim that they have written and executed their first Smalltalk program ("there, that wasn't hard was it?" LOL).
By "user" I ment a person using a application, such as web browser or office suite, which is what started the debate. I probably was not clear even for myself but by developer I ment anyone using Squeak for developement or playing, or simply interacting with it. From this perspective, what you are complaining about (rightly!) is in the _developer_ scope, not _user_ scope. I could write much about Squeak (Morpic) UI feeling awfully inconsistent , illogical and complicated (to me at least), so just one example: Line up 4 (partly overlaping) elements:a Workspace window, a Morphic Project Window, a Pinned Menu and a Book Morph. Each of them behave completely differently in terms of a) how to bring them to front and b) how to pick them up and move. (thanks for the halo that is the only consistent interaction!) For new developers (ok, users, in your view) this must be a complete turn off. the complexity of menus is another thing. I am not sure there is a way to "fix" this, as it would require to define some UI rules first, I am thinking that using something like Tweak is probably the way out of it.
So to get specific: should the focus be on attracting more developers or more "casual" users, and are better development tools needed or more end-user applications? In truth there is no correct answer and it is a bit of a chicken-n-egg situation.
yes i agree completely. What I am not sure about (but will have no problem to be wrong, and not discouraging ) is whether developing large scale end user applications that exist today (and have many man-years development invested in them), is a practical way to gain user base.
Milan
Any answer depends on the state of affairs at the time it is given. Today there are developers (I'm not sure how many) but I argue that there are *no* casual users and that end-user applications are needed. If the question is "who cares about casual users?" then I say that these, not developers, are future life-blood of Squeak/Smalltalk development, they will generate the demand that ensures Squeak/Smalltalk continues to exist and improve. I could also question the role of developers without end-users and postulate that if there were more end-users today then there would also be jobs for Smalltalk developers... and everyone would be happy
:-P
A few final points:
- I pay homage to EToys, Seaside, Scratch, Sophie etc but none of
these are what I would class as In-Squeak user-based applications. Croquet of course offers potential but I would say not for general consumption until high speed comms and 3D hw acceleration become so standard that suppliers/manufacturers list them in their basic specs (if only people would not dream to buy machines without hw 3D!)
- I recognise the wealth of code in the image but question the
accessibility of this to casual users or even wanna-be programmers. In the case of the former presentation is very much key, for the latter the amorphousness of Smalltalk interfaces lack the "sign-posts" provided by well-documented API's in other environments.
- Squeak is an ideal place to challenge peoples concepts of what a GUI
is and what they should be able to with it. A much better environment for *any* sort of experimentation than say "Proce55ing". I have a few ideas that I'd like to throw into the pot, depending on what direction Brad takes this conversation.
- To the hardcore Smalltalk developers: despite any apparent
criticisms above, I LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU! Carry on coding dudes! :-)
He he :-) Yes, it may seem that I have shot myself in the back with my own arrow... but it only "seems" that way. I inserted a paradox-breaking clause in a previous post which magically allows a slimey git like to also dodge other peoples arrows ;-)
Glad you liked the speech Mike! And, seriously, I also agree re breaking the user/developer barrier but see it as a problem requiring a C-bridge as in A-to-B via C. (told ya: "slimey" is my middle name)
The original motivation was finding ways to evangelize the benefits of smalltalk and how to bring more people into the squeak fold. My use of the phrase "everyday users" was meant to define those who have not had the privilege to use an environment like smalltalk, or at least the promise of the smalltalk environment.
My understanding, and my intent, is that the dynabook world does not differentiate between users and developers. They are one in the same and the differentiation is only in their skill set. One of the coolest features of smalltalk is the idea of molding the environment to one's personal needs.
I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's throats, etc.). If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them. Some people are even saying Linux may gain some big market share.
So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make GUI applications on these platforms. I know nearly nothing about the MAC world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for GTK.
Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more productive then other languages. So I think it may be time to prove it.
I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just like a normal windows app. And what is more, after you build an application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you write and turn it into a MSI kind of package. This includes turning certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they can share libraries, etc., etc..
And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native windows apps. You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but vastly more power.
What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this. A great GUI builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package. Well, native looking. If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a smalltalk interpreter in there. The payback with the installer is, we can then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we make. The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk. If we end up becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have quite an advantage in the native UI space. And I understand the concerns about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to remember is that all applications change all the time. What a Word processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look like today and will be still more different in another 5. Not drastically, but new features are being added. All we have to do is keep up with the features they have and add our own here and there. To take a page from Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it the next day.
Think about Mozilla for example. They are pretty advanced, but it is an enormous code base in C. They can't add new core features quickly.
I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if nothing else). And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't there before. And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick as Smalltalk can.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
All,
<sniped>
_________________________________________________________________
From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to the
Academy Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1
One of smalltalk's wonderful features is it's prototyping ability, that's true. I think what you are proposing is to create native apps with Squeak to get developers excited about the development possibilities of Squeak.
But, I think we would go down the wrong road, and do a real disservice, if we encouraged building native OS applications. Squeak moves beyond the OS and vertical applications (or, never been there) into a world not necessarily requiring an operating system - on into a personal environment where user's can manipulate objects for their own needs on any hardware.
(I used the word "application" in my original msg because I didn't know what else to use. Using the word "object" is ok, but doesn't convey the idea of an object that is feature-rich to satisfy a particular higher order need (like a web browser does.))
What we need is to convince Mr. Dell to sell computers with Squeak on it and nothing else. That would be the ultimate.
J J wrote:
I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's throats, etc.). If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them. Some people are even saying Linux may gain some big market share.
So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make GUI applications on these platforms. I know nearly nothing about the MAC world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for GTK.
Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more productive then other languages. So I think it may be time to prove it.
I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just like a normal windows app. And what is more, after you build an application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you write and turn it into a MSI kind of package. This includes turning certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they can share libraries, etc., etc..
And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native windows apps. You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but vastly more power.
What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this. A great GUI builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package. Well, native looking. If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a smalltalk interpreter in there. The payback with the installer is, we can then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we make. The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk. If we end up becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have quite an advantage in the native UI space. And I understand the concerns about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to remember is that all applications change all the time. What a Word processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look like today and will be still more different in another 5. Not drastically, but new features are being added. All we have to do is keep up with the features they have and add our own here and there. To take a page from Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it the next day.
Think about Mozilla for example. They are pretty advanced, but it is an enormous code base in C. They can't add new core features quickly.
I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if nothing else). And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't there before. And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick as Smalltalk can.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
All,
<sniped>
From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to the
Academy Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1
Brad Fuller wrote:
What we need is to convince Mr. Dell to sell computers with Squeak on it and nothing else. That would be the ultimate.
Which would only certainly happen if we had a large base, or potentially large base, of users craving for Squeak.
hmmm.. back to the original problem...
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2007 15:45:14 -0800
One of smalltalk's wonderful features is it's prototyping ability, that's true. I think what you are proposing is to create native apps with Squeak to get developers excited about the development possibilities of Squeak.
Yes. That and proving to others how good Squeak/Smalltalk is by constantly being ahead of them. I should also mention, I don't mean native as in "compiles to machine code". It will still be the same system, just with unused components stripped out of the package.
But, I think we would go down the wrong road, and do a real disservice, if we encouraged building native OS applications. Squeak moves beyond the OS and vertical applications (or, never been there) into a world not necessarily requiring an operating system - on into a personal environment where user's can manipulate objects for their own needs on any hardware.
But having the ability to generate native looking doesn't mean we can't still build in Squeak in this way. In fact, we still have to *develop* this way. It is just that when we make a new "application" or update an older one, we press a "deploy" button and now we have a package that we can use with all the native package tools of the different operating systems.
In other words, we can be on a high horse and say "no compromise! This is the future and you must take the whole or you can have nothing!" and everyone will continue to choose their less capable languages (except for web programming where we don't have this issue). Or we can reach out just a little and prove what we can do.
I am not talking about something radical like getting source files. Not having source files is a big part of what gives Smalltalk it's advantage and I would never want to see that changed just to look more familiar. I would never want to change Smalltalk in any way just to look familiar.
But I do care about playing well with others where it makes sense. And to me, an ability like this makes sense. Right now, if I made some cool application in Squeak what does the average user have to do to see it? They use their native app installer to get squeak, then they have to learn the Squeak interface to be able to use *our* app installer to finally get it. That puts us at a rather large disadvantage.
Right now, people are doing this kind of packaging for stand alone applications anyway. Look at Sophie for example. And what about commercial apps? We want to support those right? If a vendor releases something for the desktop, it will be a stand alone app.
But if we make the stand alone application generator, we can do anything we want. For example, we can have the default error handler to pop up a window to the user, much like MS windows does now, and give them an option to send a "bug report". The "bug report" would actually zip up the image, right where it is and mail it to the developer so when he runs it in his own image, he has the full debugger et al. to rapidly find and fix the problem. We can have the built in auto-update system just load a change set. Using the power of Smalltalk, our application can update itself while running. No application restarts for updates.
What we need is to convince Mr. Dell to sell computers with Squeak on it and nothing else. That would be the ultimate.
Squeak isn't ready to fit that roll, even if there was interest.
_________________________________________________________________ Laugh, share and connect with Windows Live Messenger http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://ima...
Hi all,
I disagree with native windows. One of the features of Squeak is get an image and load it on any OS without changes with a proper vm. And I love this as much as I love the Smalltalk/Squeak way to develop.
The thing could be change with the windows feel. More like a normal window but with the squeak features.
As I said one day: http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/squeak-toy-or-instrument/
I'm founding my company, and talking with my girlfriend, I told her about make my projects on smalltalk. She told me:
"all the benefits if you use squeak are very good but, what happen with the end-user? The end-user have fear about changes. You can make a ERP with Squeak?" Yes I told it. "And looks like other apps?" No "Then will be very difficult to sell"
I told her about XProgramming, OO benefits, blablabla all very beautiful but as She saids,
"If you give an app to an end-user and this app don't looks like a normal app, this end-user doesn't want it. He will not use the app because look strange."
I have the same opinion I expressed on October 2006. Is good if Squeak have a different look, for the actual look exists SqueakLand with her own image. I don't talk about gray apps (as Diego calls it). But a lot of widgets inside the image, with a business look could be interesting.
Develop over squeak is fun, and this is important, but, the end-user doesn't understand about develop fun. "He" wants work, not develop, and "he" don't want "coloured windows" because disconcern it. I pay my bills thanks to the app's I develop. If I can't sell my app's, then I can't pay my bills. I don't like this way, but is the reality. The end-user is the boss, and you must do your work as "he" wants, because "he" pay.
If you offer an app in Squeak, and other company offer the same app, but developed over VB, .NET, Java etc.., he will choose the VB,.NET,Java project because the other is strange and doesn't look an app.
Now, some people will be answer with "Komanche+Seaside=Web Interface" but, as I said, (I think) the web interface is not the solution, not all the end-users likes web interface to work (a point of sale on a supermarket for example), and remember, "he" pay.
Is sad. All is around money, yes, but is the reality and, I think, all of us, wants work with Squeak using it on commercial projects for our own benefit, and not use it only on home to invest.
There are "solutions" (¿solution?) like wxSqueak, but seems not continued.
IMHO, If Squeak change the look&feel, could be the Smalltalk flavour thath make shadow to VisualWorks. And we, the developers (and users), don't need a pink debug window to fun developing.
Well, this is only my pesonal opinion (not the solution) about this (again). My 2 cents.
El Sábado, 3 de Febrero de 2007 22:00, J J escribió:
I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's throats, etc.). If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them. Some people are even saying Linux may gain some big market share.
So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make GUI applications on these platforms. I know nearly nothing about the MAC world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for GTK.
Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more productive then other languages. So I think it may be time to prove it.
I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just like a normal windows app. And what is more, after you build an application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you write and turn it into a MSI kind of package. This includes turning certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they can share libraries, etc., etc..
And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native windows apps. You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but vastly more power.
What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this. A great GUI builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package. Well, native looking. If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a smalltalk interpreter in there. The payback with the installer is, we can then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we make. The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk. If we end up becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have quite an advantage in the native UI space. And I understand the concerns about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to remember is that all applications change all the time. What a Word processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look like today and will be still more different in another 5. Not drastically, but new features are being added. All we have to do is keep up with the features they have and add our own here and there. To take a page from Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it the next day.
Think about Mozilla for example. They are pretty advanced, but it is an enormous code base in C. They can't add new core features quickly.
I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if nothing else). And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't there before. And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick as Smalltalk can.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
All,
<sniped>
From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to the
Academy Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1
Yep, if you want to move beyond the status quo and provide tools that seem odd at first blush to users, it's going to be a tad tougher sell. as always:
"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experiences of it. Thus, it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."
1513 AD Machiavelli
Giuseppe Luigi Punzi wrote:
Hi all,
I disagree with native windows. One of the features of Squeak is get an image and load it on any OS without changes with a proper vm. And I love this as much as I love the Smalltalk/Squeak way to develop.
The thing could be change with the windows feel. More like a normal window but with the squeak features.
As I said one day: http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/squeak-toy-or-instrument/
I'm founding my company, and talking with my girlfriend, I told her about make my projects on smalltalk. She told me:
"all the benefits if you use squeak are very good but, what happen with the end-user? The end-user have fear about changes. You can make a ERP with Squeak?" Yes I told it. "And looks like other apps?" No "Then will be very difficult to sell"
I told her about XProgramming, OO benefits, blablabla all very beautiful but as She saids,
"If you give an app to an end-user and this app don't looks like a normal app, this end-user doesn't want it. He will not use the app because look strange."
I have the same opinion I expressed on October 2006. Is good if Squeak have a different look, for the actual look exists SqueakLand with her own image. I don't talk about gray apps (as Diego calls it). But a lot of widgets inside the image, with a business look could be interesting.
Develop over squeak is fun, and this is important, but, the end-user doesn't understand about develop fun. "He" wants work, not develop, and "he" don't want "coloured windows" because disconcern it. I pay my bills thanks to the app's I develop. If I can't sell my app's, then I can't pay my bills. I don't like this way, but is the reality. The end-user is the boss, and you must do your work as "he" wants, because "he" pay.
If you offer an app in Squeak, and other company offer the same app, but developed over VB, .NET, Java etc.., he will choose the VB,.NET,Java project because the other is strange and doesn't look an app.
Now, some people will be answer with "Komanche+Seaside=Web Interface" but, as I said, (I think) the web interface is not the solution, not all the end-users likes web interface to work (a point of sale on a supermarket for example), and remember, "he" pay.
Is sad. All is around money, yes, but is the reality and, I think, all of us, wants work with Squeak using it on commercial projects for our own benefit, and not use it only on home to invest.
There are "solutions" (¿solution?) like wxSqueak, but seems not continued.
IMHO, If Squeak change the look&feel, could be the Smalltalk flavour thath make shadow to VisualWorks. And we, the developers (and users), don't need a pink debug window to fun developing.
Well, this is only my pesonal opinion (not the solution) about this (again). My 2 cents.
El Sábado, 3 de Febrero de 2007 22:00, J J escribió:
I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's throats, etc.). If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them. Some people are even saying Linux may gain some big market share.
So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make GUI applications on these platforms. I know nearly nothing about the MAC world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for GTK.
Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more productive then other languages. So I think it may be time to prove it.
I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just like a normal windows app. And what is more, after you build an application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you write and turn it into a MSI kind of package. This includes turning certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they can share libraries, etc., etc..
And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native windows apps. You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but vastly more power.
What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this. A great GUI builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package. Well, native looking. If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a smalltalk interpreter in there. The payback with the installer is, we can then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we make. The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk. If we end up becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have quite an advantage in the native UI space. And I understand the concerns about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to remember is that all applications change all the time. What a Word processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look like today and will be still more different in another 5. Not drastically, but new features are being added. All we have to do is keep up with the features they have and add our own here and there. To take a page from Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it the next day.
Think about Mozilla for example. They are pretty advanced, but it is an enormous code base in C. They can't add new core features quickly.
I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if nothing else). And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't there before. And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick as Smalltalk can.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
All,
<sniped>
From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to the
Academy Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1
But it is a much easier sell if you provide your radical solution one bite at a time. As always.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:01:59 -0800
Yep, if you want to move beyond the status quo and provide tools that seem odd at first blush to users, it's going to be a tad tougher sell. as always:
"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experiences of it. Thus, it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."
1513 AD Machiavelli
Giuseppe Luigi Punzi wrote:
Hi all,
I disagree with native windows. One of the features of Squeak is get an image and load it on any OS without changes with a proper vm. And I love this as much as I love the Smalltalk/Squeak way to develop.
The thing could be change with the windows feel. More like a normal window but with the squeak features.
As I said one day: http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/squeak-toy-or-instrument/
I'm founding my company, and talking with my girlfriend, I told her about make my projects on smalltalk. She told me:
"all the benefits if you use squeak are very good but, what happen with the end-user? The end-user have fear about changes. You can make a ERP with Squeak?" Yes I told it. "And looks like other apps?" No "Then will be very difficult to sell"
I told her about XProgramming, OO benefits, blablabla all very beautiful but as She saids,
"If you give an app to an end-user and this app don't looks like a normal app, this end-user doesn't want it. He will not use the app because look strange."
I have the same opinion I expressed on October 2006. Is good if Squeak have a different look, for the actual look exists SqueakLand with her own image. I don't talk about gray apps (as Diego calls it). But a lot of widgets inside the image, with a business look could be interesting.
Develop over squeak is fun, and this is important, but, the end-user doesn't understand about develop fun. "He" wants work, not develop, and "he" don't want "coloured windows" because disconcern it. I pay my bills thanks to the app's I develop. If I can't sell my app's, then I can't pay my bills. I don't like this way, but is the reality. The end-user is the boss, and you must do your work as "he" wants, because "he" pay.
If you offer an app in Squeak, and other company offer the same app, but developed over VB, .NET, Java etc.., he will choose the VB,.NET,Java project because the other is strange and doesn't look an app.
Now, some people will be answer with "Komanche+Seaside=Web Interface" but, as I said, (I think) the web interface is not the solution, not all the end-users likes web interface to work (a point of sale on a supermarket for example), and remember, "he" pay.
Is sad. All is around money, yes, but is the reality and, I think, all of us, wants work with Squeak using it on commercial projects for our own benefit, and not use it only on home to invest.
There are "solutions" (¿solution?) like wxSqueak, but seems not continued.
IMHO, If Squeak change the look&feel, could be the Smalltalk flavour thath make shadow to VisualWorks. And we, the developers (and users), don't need a pink debug window to fun developing.
Well, this is only my pesonal opinion (not the solution) about this (again). My 2 cents.
El Sábado, 3 de Febrero de 2007 22:00, J J escribió:
I have been thinking about this stuff as well.
Vista is out, and the places I read think Microsoft may have opened the door for some competition (due to trying to force DRM down everyone's throats, etc.). If Steve Jobs goes for it, Micheal Dell said he is interested in shipping Dells with Mac OS on them. Some people are even saying Linux may gain some big market share.
So what this means to me is, people will be looking for an easy way to make GUI applications on these platforms. I know nearly nothing about the MAC world, but in Linux the only RAD tool I am aware of is a code generator for GTK.
Now in Smalltalk we always say (and I believe) that we can be much more productive then other languages. So I think it may be time to prove it.
I don't know how many of you have used Dolphin, but it is an amazing system. It only works on windows, but the GUI is wonderful and looks just like a normal windows app. And what is more, after you build an application, it has tools to automatically package up the application you write and turn it into a MSI kind of package. This includes turning certain parts into DLL's so that if you write multiple applications they can share libraries, etc., etc..
And I think Dolphin is currently the perfect system for building native windows apps. You get as much, or more speed then a VB environment but vastly more power.
What would be nice, is if Squeak had something like this. A great GUI builder (maybe it has already) and some way that we could use some system to turn an application we write into a native Linux/Mac OS package. Well, native looking. If you check what Dolphin installs you would find a smalltalk interpreter in there. The payback with the installer is, we can then submit "binaries" to distributions like Debian for any applications we make. The end user doesn't need to know it is Smalltalk. If we end up becoming a big player in the Linux and/or MAC world, people will be *begging* us to share how we are doing it.
With a rapid GUI development tool bound with the productivity of the Smalltalk language and the platform independence of Squeak we could have quite an advantage in the native UI space. And I understand the concerns about making apps that do things that already exist, but what we have to remember is that all applications change all the time. What a Word processor looked like 5 years ago is a little different then what they look like today and will be still more different in another 5. Not drastically, but new features are being added. All we have to do is keep up with the features they have and add our own here and there. To take a page from Paul Graham's book, when ever a "competitor" adds a feature, we can have it the next day.
Think about Mozilla for example. They are pretty advanced, but it is an enormous code base in C. They can't add new core features quickly.
I still believe the web will play an even larger roll in the future then now, but we will always have to have *some* native apps (a browser if nothing else). And if MAC gets a bigger percentage of the desktop market share (and maybe even Linux), this could open up an opportunity that wasn't there before. And I don't think anyone can move to cover that gap as quick as Smalltalk can.
From: Brad Fuller brad@bradfuller.com Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers listsqueak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Making Squeak more accessible and used - reversing the trend Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:05:01 -0800
All,
<sniped>
From predictions to trailers, check out the MSN Entertainment Guide to
the
Academy Awards® http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/?icid=ncoscartagline1
-- brad fuller www.bradfuller.com
_________________________________________________________________ FREE online classifieds from Windows Live Expo buy and sell with people you know http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwex0010000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://exp...
Brad Fuller wrote:
Thus, it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."
1513 AD Machiavelli
this is very true of any truggle for power, like in politics, economy, and war.
but I fail to see any need for such struggle in computer science. Squeak is an open source project and as such does not have to fight anything. if we just make it as good as we can, according to our own elitist and knowledgeable idea of "good", then that is enough.
I do not see the point in having anyone to convince, nor any fight to figh, nor any product to sell. let's just be free of struggle, intelligent and creative. let's just build a beautiful piece of software, end even if it takes 50 years for its quality to be somewhat largely recognized (as it happens to Lisp nowadays), well what is the problem ?
Stef
Stéphane Rollandin wrote:
I do not see the point in having anyone to convince, nor any fight to figh, nor any product to sell. let's just be free of struggle, intelligent and creative. let's just build a beautiful piece of software, end even if it takes 50 years for its quality to be somewhat largely recognized (as it happens to Lisp nowadays), well what is the problem ?
I don't see any. The great thing about squeak, the community and the license is you can pretty much do as you please.
On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:08:54 +0100, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:
Brad Fuller wrote:
Thus, it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger." 1513 AD Machiavelli
this is very true of any truggle for power, like in politics, economy, and war.
but I fail to see any need for such struggle in computer science. Squeak is an open source project and as such does not have to fight anything. if we just make it as good as we can, according to our own elitist and knowledgeable idea of "good", then that is enough.
+ (1 big)
I do not see the point in having anyone to convince, nor any fight to figh, nor any product to sell. let's just be free of struggle, intelligent and creative. let's just build a beautiful piece of software, end even if it takes 50 years for its quality to be somewhat largely recognized (as it happens to Lisp nowadays), well what is the problem ?
Yeah, there are so many open source projects, see for example yesterday's "How To Tell Open-Source Winners From Losers"
- http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/05/1618253
but only so few programming languages ;-)
/Klaus
Stef
Stéphane Rollandin a écrit :
Brad Fuller wrote:
Thus, it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."
1513 AD Machiavelli
this is very true of any truggle for power, like in politics, economy, and war.
but I fail to see any need for such struggle in computer science. Squeak is an open source project and as such does not have to fight anything. if we just make it as good as we can, according to our own elitist and knowledgeable idea of "good", then that is enough.
I do not see the point in having anyone to convince, nor any fight to figh, nor any product to sell. let's just be free of struggle, intelligent and creative. let's just build a beautiful piece of software, end even if it takes 50 years for its quality to be somewhat largely recognized (as it happens to Lisp nowadays), well what is the problem ?
Stef
The problem is for the poor guy that get paid for doing C++ or java or the like, dreaming that he could get paid the same for doing the job in Smalltalk...
For sure he has to convince he could work more or getting paid less... Bad news that he has to wait 50 years long...
Nicolas
On 05/02/07, Giuseppe Luigi Punzi glpunzi@zyoconsulting.com wrote:
I disagree with native windows. One of the features of Squeak is get an image and load it on any OS without changes with a proper vm. And I love this as much as I love the Smalltalk/Squeak way to develop.
The thing could be change with the windows feel. More like a normal window but with the squeak features.
I don't think you're alone in this; just looking through the Swiki there have been many attempts to address this need:
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1576 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1008 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3480 http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5887 Edgar J. De Cleene's 2006 return to Zurgle
Most of them are incomplete, out-of-date, and abandoned; but they show that developers are repeatedly coming back to a need to find an easy way to create and manage a user interface that employs the metaphors that have become familiar to most desktop users. Not a "Windows clone", but perhaps something like Tk or Swing Metal -- familiar enough, but not tied to the platform -- and not requiring extra installation above and beyond the Squeak VM & image.
After looking at the options (and trying unsuccessfully to make prefab usable for me), I gave up! I'm now using Seaside to build the UI for my applications. This isn't a perfect answer, in fact using a complex mix of HTML CSS and JS to replicate a rich client interface is pretty mad, but it quickly gives me a user interface that is familiar and can be layed out quickly and easily.
If I had access within Squeak to a full set of UI widgets that had a consistent look and feel, were more 'mainstream', and preferably came with builder tools (perhaps Magritte with layout hinting), I'd love to have the power of Morphic under the covers, but as it is, Seaside is the best game in town.
Cheers, Michael
From: Michael Davies Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 4:04 PM
[snip] After looking at the options (and trying unsuccessfully to make prefab usable for me), I gave up! I'm now using Seaside to build the UI for my applications. This isn't a perfect answer, in fact using a complex mix of HTML CSS and JS to replicate a rich client interface is pretty mad, but it quickly gives me a user interface that is familiar and can be layed out quickly and easily.
If I had access within Squeak to a full set of UI widgets that had a consistent look and feel, were more 'mainstream', and preferably came with builder tools (perhaps Magritte with layout hinting), I'd love to have the power of Morphic under the covers, but as it is, Seaside is the best game in town.
Cheers, Michael
+1 For what it's worth I came to the same conclusion!
Ron Teitelbaum
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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