October 2010 - Esug-list - lists.esug.org

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Julian Fitzell

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Andres Valloud <avalloud(a)cincom.com> wrote: >> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience: >> intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look >> and >> feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is >> still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that >> much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being >> treated like a black and white movie :) > > But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we will > make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on the > difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with how to > make an image from scratch, for example. As someone who spends much of my time dealing with Smalltalk users, customers, and prospects, I can say that it *does* matter to most people. Solving difficult problems is a very valuable thing to do, but without doing it in an environment that is broadly appealing (visually, UX, etc. as Geert says) Smalltalk will never have any chance of being more than a tiny niche (think of WinAmp or VLC - neither would have been successful without attractive, intuitive user interfaces, even though the real reason I used/use them was for the really practical features). Julian

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Promoting Smalltalk

by Geert Claes

Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote: > > -Applications : We should develop cool applications that target domains > that interest users (e.g. mobile applications, web). The look and feel/ > user experience is important to have some impact. A recent really cool > example is the Event Planning System developed by the belgian company > Inceptive... > +1 Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote: > > -Programming environments : I love the Smalltalk IDE. Still, many > developers don't want to change their programming habit. ... > Smalltalkers do love their powerful IDE, but to the average newcomer it is - compared to other IDE's these days - certainly far from being intuitive. Noury Bouraqadi-2 wrote: > > -Documentation : Both on-line and paper articles and books. Code examples > are important. People new to Smalltalk should quickly find some code to > copy/paste and test. > Yes, I reckon a better, easier to use project/code sharing infrastructure (replacing SqueakSource) is required with more useful educational sample projects. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018404p30… Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Promoting Smalltalk (was Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code)

by Andres Valloud

> -Standard/Mainstream protocols, libraries, and infrastructures. We > need to provide a bridge to all important pieces of software (e.g. > OpenGL). With respect to bridging to other languages in particular, we need to be careful not to impose a Smalltalk POV on things that are not Smalltalk. For instance, the community of the "foreign" language targeted by an FFI is not going to be impressed by our efforts if they see their language misrepresented or misunderstood. This is only fair, if some other language wrote an FFI into Smalltalk, we wouldn't like this other FFI to misrepresent Smalltalk either. > People like computer scientists and modelers who are trying to solve fundamental problems, get the data structures right, get the algorithms right etc. are far more likely to look past the gloss and glitz and appreciate the power and capabilities of a language like Smalltalk. Yes, and in some areas I think we could be doing a better job at promoting Smalltalk to those people. > What saddened me was that the projects had great looking UI's and most were available as both desktop and web applications, but the fundamental functionality, integrity, sophistication of systems and thought in design was actually at a lower standard than we had a decade ago. I hope we manage to stay as far away from that as possible, for otherwise we would not be leveraging Smalltalk's advantages when dealing with difficult problems. And it's hard to ignore people who consistently deal with difficult problems successfully... Andres.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Graham McLeod

Hi Dennis, Geert, Adres, Serge and other commenters.. I used to teach information systems at the University of Cape Town, where final year students do an industry project. I visited their project demonstration expo yesterday as a a guest. I last taught there in 2003, and on that course around 2000, so it is just ten years since the last projects I supervised directly. What saddened me was that the projects had great looking UI's and most were available as both desktop and web applications, but the fundamental functionality, integrity, sophistication of systems and thought in design was actually at a lower standard than we had a decade ago. I even saw interfaces where it would require software changes to add a new product category, for example. The new shininess is largely due to the use of new tools such as Visual Studio, Web Frameworks (think JQuery, ExtJs etc. ) and new browser and OS skins (Chrome / Windows 7 etc. ). Unfortunately, like when meeting someone, or dating, first impressions count. Students (and many commercial developers and their managers who hold budgets) are impressed by shiny new toys. If these are proffered by professional looking marketing people at fancy functions at apparently successful companies (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle..) then they are all the more impressed. People like computer scientists and modelers who are trying to solve fundamental problems, get the data structures right, get the algorithms right etc. are far more likely to look past the gloss and glitz and appreciate the power and capabilities of a language like Smalltalk. So, what to do? I think there are a number of good things we can leverage, and some ideas: * Push the variants of Smalltalk that _do_ look good - these include Pharo, VisualWorks on the desktop, Dolphin etc. * Show the power of the IDEs and contrast these with the clumsy bulkiness of something like Eclipse. Here we must be careful, because there are other very slick products out there, including Visual Studio (it _is_ very pretty :| ) * Push the web capable variants (pretty much all the Smalltalks with Seaside or Aida) - many people are surprised at how well Smalltalk "does" web * Show developers the power of the language - especially the ability to create a "domain friendly" language at a level of abstraction that reduces the code required for solutions dramatically * Create literature and make it widely available on project success stories and language productivity (properly measured - e.g. function points per staff month) Interestingly, I recently was exposed to a large and "successful" Java project in an assurance environment. When we measured the developer productivity, it was about 25% lower than we were getting with mainframe COBOL in the late '70s! * And some ideas: o Link Smalltalk to "sexy" topics that have current mindshare - e.g. CloudFork is a good example. o I would like to see a GSOC project to address semantic triple store capabilities and a sematic web application of these - think Freebase o Doing good UI's is still quite hard and labour intensive - Seaside provides a great framework, but we are still working pretty much at the level of HTML / CSS concepts. I would like to see a layer describing logical data structures e.g. List, Tree, Matrix, Document (sequenced set of objects), Model (spatially arranged and possibly connected objects) and a visual editor (or very high level DSL) that allows composition of these into user interfaces with a publish / subscribe event model and choice of suitable controls and widgets based upon the logical data type. (this one is probably a bit too big for a GSOC but may be tackled in pieces. ) o We should also try to put together really rich / capable development images which are easily accessible / one click install and still small enough to be grasped reasonably easily by someone new to the environment. These could include tools like: pharo, sunit, seaside, (some easy clean persistence layer), magritte, pier, swakom, moose, glamour on steroides (see previous point). Maybe integrating these tools and providing a nice dashboard could be another good GSOC target.. Hope some of this makes sense. Welcome feedback and comments. Best regards, Graham Dennis Schetinin wrote: > … and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit > > 1. Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS > :) Very pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language > and culture shock :) Great experience for me personally. Thank > ESUG for choosing and sending me there. > 2. Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new > actually, we know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) > Seriously: actually, it looks like everybody knows Smalltalk > (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still exists), but it > is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow! it's > cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take > Smalltalk seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But > we have to show that for others. And I found myself unable to do > that there. I found language and, more likely, culture barrier > is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to set up a two-way > communication with others. So I listened mostly. > 3. And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, > organizational ideas mostly. I need some time to process them. > So, for now I'll just outline some directions… > 4. Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, > but apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page > http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list. > I didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important > to look closer at the projects we did within GSoC, understand > where we succeeded; where we failed; did we benefit and could we > get more; make some plans for the future... etc. > 5. I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very > important for our small society. Of course, we can't be sure > smalltalkers will be invited again next year. (One of the things > I tried to understand at summit but still I don't: how does > Google select mentor organizations?) But this work will be very > helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever. > 6. We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our > projects. Since money are involved here, we have a right to. > That's money from Google, but still. I think it should be a bit > different from the way free projects are evolved within > Smalltalk society. Since we have such opportunity we have to > benefit as much as we can. > 7. Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I > don't want to :) but now I understand even better: we have to > promote Smalltalk. I know everybody knows that, but I still want > to state it once again. And promoting is not only about > advertising and praising. We should be more open. We should find > a way to start some cooperative projects with other > societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's > extremely hard for me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) > But still we have if we don't want Smalltalk to die. In general, > it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, > and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk > among developers. > > > > -- > Dennis Schetinin > > > _______________________________________________ > Esug-list mailing list > Esug-list(a)lists.esug.org > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org

Oct. 29, 2010

Promoting Smalltalk (was Re: Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code)

by Noury Bouraqadi

Thanks Dennis for this detailed feedback. It's important to keep the community informed. On 29 oct. 2010, at 05:41, Dennis Schetinin wrote: > We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages. > [...] > In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers. > I fully agree. There are multiple directions to go. -Applications : We should develop cool applications that target domains that interest users (e.g. mobile applications, web). The look and feel/ user experience is important to have some impact. A recent really cool example is the Event Planning System developed by the belgian company Inceptive. We need to advertise more such applications to the outside of the community. The on-line videos and slides, blogs and the awards are made for this. Still we need more advertisements in places where we can -GUI : This is coupled with the previous item. We need native widgets. Smalltalk developers should be able to applications that comply with the appearance of other applications. Projects such as MARS (Smalltalk software with Mac OS X widgets) is an example. -Programming environments : I love the Smalltalk IDE. Still, many developers don't want to change their programming habit. May be not from the beginning. We should be able to develop Smalltalk in an text editor. This was done in GNU Smalltalk and there is also the CORAL initiative. The effort need to be continued. -Standard/Mainstream protocols, libraries, and infrastructures. We need to provide a bridge to all important pieces of software (e.g. OpenGL). Web frameworks such as Seaside, Aida are definitely a great step in this direction. -Documentation : Both on-line and paper articles and books. Code examples are important. People new to Smalltalk should quickly find some code to copy/paste and test. To sum up, there are already different actions. Still, we need to do more. If you have ideas share them with us. Spending a little of your time in one of these actions would be beneficial to everyone. Noury

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Andres Valloud

> Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience: > intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look and > feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is > still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that > much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being > treated like a black and white movie :) But see, I'm already sold, so I just don't see the point :)... IMO, we will make the most progress in this area by concentrating our efforts on the difficult problems. It makes me happy to see people concerned with how to make an image from scratch, for example. Andres.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Geert Claes

Valloud, Andres wrote: > > ... I remember Stephane and others commenting several times that > appearance is an issue, and that we need a nicer looking UI. Is this > really the main selling factor these days, or does that apply mostly to > students? ... > Its not just appearance Andres, it's the complete User eXperience: intuitiveness, ease of use, productivity, fun factor as well as the look and feel. A lot of progress has already been made in this area, but there is still a long way to go because most Smalltalk IDE's have not evolved that much since the 70's ... that's probably part of why Smalltalk is being treated like a black and white movie :) -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018404p30… Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Geert Claes

Thanks for the feedback Dennis. Regarding your points: Dennis Schetinin wrote: > > 2. Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. ... > Well, that's not entirely true :) The world.st site has so far had visitors from 73 countries with the top 10 coming from: Germany, United States, Uruguay, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, Colombia, Austria. Dennis Schetinin wrote: > > 7. ... we have to promote Smalltalk ... > Agree, Smalltalk seems to be strong in countries where it is (still) used in education. To further promote this, more educational material will be made available for others to use as they see fit. A number of lecture presentations have already been uploaded and more will follow. We plan to make them available through http://www.world.st/presentations There are also more and more screencasts published by community members. Dennis Schetinin wrote: > > 7. ... we should be more open .... > Most Smalltalk projects are already open. Commercial success stories is probably something which would be nice to make the headlines more often. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Few-thoughts-about-Google-Summer-of-Code-tp3018405p30… Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Andres Valloud

> You are totally right ... i have the same problem when i meet > developers from other languages. It's very difficult to change the > mind of people. I have no real answer except continue do some cool > stuff and make more noise. I betcha this is a two way street. What would we see in a Smalltalker from the point of view of, say, C? Would we think we can change the Smalltalker's mind? I remember Stephane and others commenting several times that appearance is an issue, and that we need a nicer looking UI. Is this really the main selling factor these days, or does that apply mostly to students (I phrase it this way because I remember Stef making the comment specifically with respect to students)? Andres.

Oct. 29, 2010

Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

by Serge Stinckwich

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Dennis Schetinin <chaetal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > … and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit > > Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very > pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock > :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending > me there. > Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we > know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like > everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still > exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow! > it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk > seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that > for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language > and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to > set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly. > And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas > mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some > directions… Hi Dennis, thank you for you nice report ! You are totally right ... i have the same problem when i meet developers from other languages. It's very difficult to change the mind of people. I have no real answer except continue do some cool stuff and make more noise. Regards, -- Serge Stinckwich UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk http://doesnotunderstand.org/

Oct. 29, 2010