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Please display the poster for ESUG 2011 wherever developers gather
by Niall Ross March 23, 2011

March 23, 2011

The poster for the ESUG 2011 conference is available in hi-res JPEG and PDF at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7726739/ESUG_Promo.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7726739/ESUG_Promo.pdf It names some of Smalltalk's technical and commercial achievements. It will (I hope) be a draw for Smalltalkers and also for some Rubyists (it mentions MagLev), for general dynamic language people, and for some general developers interested in something with this history of achievement, past and present (it also notes there will be intro workshops and tutorials for interested non-Smalltalkers). Please display where you can in companies, universities, user groups, etc. - wherever developers congregate. Thanks Niall Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

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Re: [Esug-list] Smalltalk hosting ...
by Marcus Denker March 22, 2011

March 22, 2011

On Mar 22, 2011, at 3:04 PM, Steven Kelly wrote: > It's great that people are willing to talk about this, and some are doing things too. Admit it though: most of this discussion is programmers talking about marketing, which is as useful as marketers talking about programming. I'm in my 20th year of Smalltalk, so I've seen this a fair few times. My 2c: I'm fairly certain that the only way Smalltalk could achieve major success is by dying and being reborn with a new name. > > If anyone has a minute (and access rights!), the ESUG pages could do with some love: > 1) they crashed yesterday, and have often slowed to a crawl Yes, and we restarted it within the fasted possible time. > 2) there's a top-level menu "Robotics" that leads to a page saying "A place for Jordi to write, ok!" This was added at around 14h today because we want to add a new page with information. > 3) The search box does nothing yes, this should be fixed. I did not yet find the energy for that. > 4) On IE8, there are Javascript errors. All pages have "Ajax is not defined", and many have some "idX is not defined" errors (for various X) > We should fix that... but then, you are the first to notice. > Believe it or not, those are the kinds of things that register with outsiders when they check out Smalltalk, in particular if they're considering using it to build things on the web. Of course I understand this is all done as volunteer work, and I appreciate the effort people have put into it. I'm just pointing out the facts and providing a bug report. > I personally think that the website is already far better then it used to be. And even though it might not be apparent, it was a lot of work. Especially moving all the old conferences into the Pier wiki... lots of work. Marcus -- Marcus Denker -- http://www.marcusdenker.de INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD.

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IWST @ ESUG 2011 call for papers
by Alain Plantec March 21, 2011

March 21, 2011

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IWST @ ESUG 2011 International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies August 23th, 2011 Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2011/International-Workshop-on-Smalltalk-Te… CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSION DEADLINE : June 17, 2011 Authors of the best accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for publication in a special issue of 'Software: Practice and Experience' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ESUG 2011 Smalltalk joint event IMPORTANT DATES * Submission deadline: June 17, 2011 * Notification deadline: July 15, 2011 GOALS AND SCOPE We are proud to invite submisssions to the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies which is held as part of the ESUG 2011 joint event at Edinburgh. The goals of the workshop is to create a forum around advances or experience in Smalltalk and to trigger discussions and exchanges of ideas. Participants are invited to submit short and not-so short research articles. We will not enforce any length restriction. However we expect papers of two kinds: * Short position papers describing emerging ideas. * Long research papers with deeper description of experiments and of research results. TOPICS We welcome contributions on all aspects, theoretical as well as practical, of Smalltalk related topics such as: * Aspect-oriented programming, * Meta-programming and Meta-modeling, * Frameworks, * Interaction with other languages, * Implementation, new dialects or languages implemented in Smalltalk, * Tools, * Design patterns, * Experience reports PUBLICATION Pending ACM approval for Digital Library. Both submissions and final papers must be prepared using the ACM SIGPLAN 10 point format. Templates for Word and LaTeX are available at http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm; this site also contains links to useful informations on how to write effective submissions. PROGRAM CHAIRS: * Loïc Lagadec (Labsticc, University of Brest, France) * Alain Plantec (Lisyc, University of Brest, France) PROGRAM COMMITTEE: * Gabriela Arevalo * Marcus Denker * Johan Fabry * Lukas Renggli * Hernan Wilkinson * Damien Cassou * Alexandre Bergel * Jordi Delgado * Johan Brichau

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Smalltalk Solutions Las Vegas 2011 - The Business Conference is over
by Georg Heeg March 18, 2011

March 18, 2011

All, Smalltalk Solutions 2011 is over. It has been a great conference. The mood among Smalltalkers was great. There is really interesting new stuff going on in various places. For those who attended and want to recap what they had heard, and for those who could not make it we are currently preparing slides and videos to become available on our web site www.stic.st. Currently we are collecting comments about * What worked? * What did not work? * What do you want to see at next conference? * Location requests * Time of the year Please send your comments to stic_management(a)stic.st, preferably within the next two weeks. Thanks to all who made this conference a great success: the sponsors Cincom, Instantiations, GemStone, and Precision, the speakers, and all the attendees! Georg Heeg STIC - Smalltalk Industry Council Executive Director Phone +49-3496-214328, Fax +49-3496-214712

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Re: [Esug-list] Smalltalk hosting ...
by Reza Razavi March 17, 2011

March 17, 2011

At 12:16 17/03/2011, Ralph Johnson wrote: >Marketing is crucial, and a weakness in the Smalltalk. Exact! And, in my experience, even when you have a unique and at least in theory widely applicable Smalltalk-based solution, its marketing implies often facing the lack of suitable Smalltalk marketing strategies in general, which overall makes your task really hard. Regards Reza Razavi http://adaptiveobjectmodel.com/blog/ http://www.afacms.com/blog/pontoon-app/

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We are preparing to this year Google Summer of Code (GSoC)
by Janko Mivšek March 11, 2011

March 11, 2011

Dear Smalltalkers, I'd like to inform you that we are preparing an application to this year Smalltalk Google Summer of Code under ESUG umbrella, as last year. If accepted, Google will pay few stipendiums to students on our Smalltalk projects. Please start thinking about ideas what projects would be nice to have. Also start looking around for students. How to approach the universitites near by you, do you know who to contact there, etc. To see last year ideas and accepted/done projects, visit last year http://gsoc2010.esug.org. More on our already open special Smalltalk GSoC 2011 website: http://gsoc2011.esug.org I'm specially inviting mentors of all past GSoCs to rejoin the mentors mailing list, where we discuss all details about this year GSoC: http://groups.google.com/group/smalltalk-gsoc-mentors Best regards Janko -- Janko Mivšek Aida/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si

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Re: [Esug-list] [squeak-dev] [ANN] ESUG supports once again SqueakDBX
by Mariano Martinez Peck March 6, 2011

March 6, 2011

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Levente Uzonyi <leves(a)elte.hu> wrote: > On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote: > > We are really happy to announce that ESUG will sponsor us once again >> through >> the ESUG Summer Talk project. This means that we have reached the ESUG >> expectations and that they still think that relational database access is >> an >> important matter in Smalltalk. >> > > snip > > 5) Cog compatibility. >> > > What has to be done? > > Indeed, nothing. We were not sure if FFI was working on it, but it turns out that it was. The idea is to be aware if Eliot releases a threaded VM/FFI so that we do not lock the VM (even if we have our micro-lock strategy when possible) > > >> 6) Use Alien instead of FFI. >> Eliot is working on a threaded CogVM. One of the projects of the GSoC of >> this year was to make something similar to a threaded FFI. What the >> student >> did is a modification in Alien (I think) that can be run in a >> multithreaded >> envirorment. He worked with Eliot. The idea is when Eliot releases the >> threaded CogVM, this FFI would work our of the box, and would avoid >> locking >> the WHOLE vm while a C function is being invoked (as it happens today with >> FFI).....So....when that VM is released, we MUST migrate to that). >> > > How is Alien better than FFI? We do not know. However, we will not spend time in Alien unless it is working out of the box and integrated in all standard VMs. > AFAIK Alien itself is not developed anymore, > parts of it will be merged with FFI. > > Ahh ok, we didn't know. Thnkas. > > Levente > > P.S.: http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakDBX.html states that code in the > repository has MIT license, but it includes Glorp which has LGPL(S) license. > > Yes, the problem is that SqueakDBX as itself (the database driver), is MIT. Thus, the repository is MIT. Glorp is LGPL. When we started (years after SqueakDBX) with GlorpDBX, we found it easier to commit our changes to SqueakDBX repo instead of the Glorp one (because not everybody may agree with our changes). The good news is that Alan Night was considering making Glorp MIT. I cc'ed him to see if there are news. Cheers Mariano

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Re: [Esug-list] [squeak-dev] [ANN] ESUG supports once again SqueakDBX
by Mariano Martinez Peck March 5, 2011

March 5, 2011

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Germán Arduino <garduino(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Certainly all the Smalltalk community should thank ESUG by the > continous support to lot of initiatives. > > And to ESUG sponsors :) and ESUG conference attendees...and...and..lots of people :) > Thanks ESUG. > > > 2011/3/4 Mariano Martinez Peck <marianopeck(a)gmail.com>: > > We are really happy to announce that ESUG will sponsor us once again > through > > the ESUG Summer Talk project. This means that we have reached the ESUG > > expectations and that they still think that relational database access is > an > > important matter in Smalltalk. > > > > One important thing is that we are going to rename the project (we are > still > > working on it) since SqueakDBX runs not only in Squeak but also in Pharo, > > and there have been even ports to Dolphin. What's the reason for this > > decision? Because we do not want to couple ourselves to a smalltalk > dialect > > nor to OpenDBX, because our project is much more than that (later I will > > tell you about our plans). So, these are some of the possible names: > > ObjectPark, SmallParking, Parktalk, SmallValet, Valetalk, ValetST, > > NorayTalk, Ballard, Noray and Cruise. Please let us know which one is > your > > favourite or help us find a new one. > > > > Another important subject is the team. There will be three "mentors", > > Esteban Lorenzano, Diogenes Moreira and myself, Mariano Martinez Peck; > and > > three students: Guillermo Polito, Nicolas Scarcella and Santiago > Bragagnolo. > > > > We are open to suggestions and ideas. In addition, we have defined a > > possible list of actions that I copy at the end of the email. > > > > For the moment, the url remains www.squeakdbx.org and the mailing > > list squeakdbx(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org > > > > Once again, we want to thank ESUG for their support and trust. > > > > Thank you very much, > > > > SqueakDBX team > > > > > > > > > > > > Possible list of actions: > > > > 1) Change SqueakDBX’s name. > > > > 2) Update GLORP version since the actual one is 3 years old. > > > > Port it again from VisualWorks, create a VW porting tool (may be). > > Complete support to Glorp. Today it works with PostgreSQL, Oracle and > > MySQL. Make it work with most databases OpenDBX supports. > > > > 3) Create a lightweight solution, alternatively to GLORP. There are some > > options: > > > > Make SqueakSave work with SqueakDBX. SqueakSave developers already > > contacted us because they wanted to do it. SqueakSave seems to be 20% > slower > > than Glorp but you don't need to write the mappings :) > > Adapt Ramon Leon's active record to use an abstract database driver, and > > create a driver for SqueakDBX. > > Port the new Glorp’s kind of active record to Pharo. (included in 2). > > > > 4) Write a Pharo By Example 2 chapter based on the card game Stef built > ;). > > > > 5) Cog compatibility. > > > > 6) Use Alien instead of FFI. > > Eliot is working on a threaded CogVM. One of the projects of the GSoC of > > this year was to make something similar to a threaded FFI. What the > student > > did is a modification in Alien (I think) that can be run in a > multithreaded > > envirorment. He worked with Eliot. The idea is when Eliot releases the > > threaded CogVM, this FFI would work our of the box, and would avoid > locking > > the WHOLE vm while a C function is being invoked (as it happens today > with > > FFI).....So....when that VM is released, we MUST migrate to that). > > > > 7) Explore performance issues (maybe with our approach of "In thread > > execution plugin"). > > > > 8) Complete integration with OpenDBX. For example, Oracle, for large > objects > > (Clob, Blob, etc) use specific functions. There are specific functions in > > OpenDBX that have to be used if the database uses specific functions > (oracle > > is the only one for the moment.). We don't manage those functions yet. > > > > 9) In this link http://www.squeakdbx.org/Targets%20and%20Features > > You can see a list of future possible features like Connection pooling > (now > > it is done!), Prepared statement interface, Store procedures, Escape and > > avoid of SQL insertion, Authentication support: extends to other methods, > > not only user/password, Full text support, etc. > > > > > > >

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[ANN] ESUG supports once again SqueakDBX
by Mariano Martinez Peck March 5, 2011

March 5, 2011

We are really happy to announce that ESUG will sponsor us once again through the ESUG Summer Talk project. This means that we have reached the ESUG expectations and that they still think that relational database access is an important matter in Smalltalk. One important thing is that we are going to rename the project (we are still working on it) since SqueakDBX runs not only in Squeak but also in Pharo, and there have been even ports to Dolphin. What's the reason for this decision? Because we do not want to couple ourselves to a smalltalk dialect nor to OpenDBX, because our project is much more than that (later I will tell you about our plans). So, these are some of the possible names: ObjectPark, SmallParking, Parktalk, SmallValet, Valetalk, ValetST, NorayTalk, Ballard, Noray and Cruise. Please let us know which one is your favourite or help us find a new one. Another important subject is the team. There will be three "mentors", Esteban Lorenzano, Diogenes Moreira and myself, Mariano Martinez Peck; and three students: Guillermo Polito, Nicolas Scarcella and Santiago Bragagnolo. We are open to suggestions and ideas. In addition, we have defined a possible list of actions that I copy at the end of the email. For the moment, the url remains www.squeakdbx.org and the mailing list squeakdbx(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org Once again, we want to thank ESUG for their support and trust. Thank you very much, SqueakDBX team Possible list of actions: 1) Change SqueakDBX’s name. 2) Update GLORP version since the actual one is 3 years old. Port it again from VisualWorks, create a VW porting tool (may be). Complete support to Glorp. Today it works with PostgreSQL, Oracle and MySQL. Make it work with most databases OpenDBX supports. 3) Create a lightweight solution, alternatively to GLORP. There are some options: Make SqueakSave work with SqueakDBX. SqueakSave developers already contacted us because they wanted to do it. SqueakSave seems to be 20% slower than Glorp but you don't need to write the mappings :) Adapt Ramon Leon's active record to use an abstract database driver, and create a driver for SqueakDBX. Port the new Glorp’s kind of active record to Pharo. (included in 2). 4) Write a Pharo By Example 2 chapter based on the card game Stef built ;). 5) Cog compatibility. 6) Use Alien instead of FFI. Eliot is working on a threaded CogVM. One of the projects of the GSoC of this year was to make something similar to a threaded FFI. What the student did is a modification in Alien (I think) that can be run in a multithreaded envirorment. He worked with Eliot. The idea is when Eliot releases the threaded CogVM, this FFI would work our of the box, and would avoid locking the WHOLE vm while a C function is being invoked (as it happens today with FFI).....So....when that VM is released, we MUST migrate to that). 7) Explore performance issues (maybe with our approach of "In thread execution plugin"). 8) Complete integration with OpenDBX. For example, Oracle, for large objects (Clob, Blob, etc) use specific functions. There are specific functions in OpenDBX that have to be used if the database uses specific functions (oracle is the only one for the moment.). We don't manage those functions yet. 9) In this link http://www.squeakdbx.org/Targets%20and%20Features You can see a list of future possible features like Connection pooling (now it is done!), Prepared statement interface, Store procedures, Escape and avoid of SQL insertion, Authentication support: extends to other methods, not only user/password, Full text support, etc.

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ESUG 2011 Call for Contributions
by Stéphane Ducasse March 2, 2011

March 2, 2011

19th International Smalltalk Joint Conference - Call for Contributions Barcelona, Spain September 20-26 2011; Camp Smalltalk September 20-21 http://esug.org/Conferences/2011/ This call includes: Developer program Free ESUG tickets International Workshop http://esug.org/Conferences/2011/International-Workshop-on-Smalltalk-Techno… Student Volunteer http://esug.org/Conferences/2011/Student+Volunteers+program Camp Smalltalk: Saturday 20th - Sunday 21st August 2011. ESUG conference: Monday 22nd - Friday 26th August 2011. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For the past 19 years, the European Smalltalk User Group (ESUG) has organised the International Smalltalk Conference, a lively forum on cutting edge software technologies that attract people from both academia and industry for a whole week. The attendees are both engineers using Smalltalk in business and students and teachers using Smalltalk both for research and didactic purposes. As every year, this year's edition of the largest European Smalltalk event will include the regular Smalltalk developers conference with renowned invited speakers, a Smalltalk camp that proves fruitful for interactions and discussions. Besides, this year will be held the - 7th edition of the Innovation Technology Awards where prizes will be awarded to authors of best pieces of Smalltalk-related projects - an international workshop on Smalltalk and dynamic languages http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2011/International-Workshop-on-Sm… - ESUG will offer 10 free entrance tickets. To get a free ticket you should send a mail to the esug board (board(a)esug.org) Subject: [ESUG 2011 Free entrance] + your name And you should write a small motivation. You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways: * Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at http://www.esug.org/supportesug/becomeasponsor/ * Submit a talk, a software or a paper to one of the events. See below. * Attend the conference. We'd like to beat the previous record of attendance (156 participants at Brest and 170 people at Amsterdam, 150 at Barcelona)! * Students can get free registration and hosting if they enroll into the the Student Volunteers program. See below. Developers Forum: International Smalltalk Developers Conference ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This year we are looking for YOUR experience on using Smalltalk. In addition, we are looking for tutorials. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to the following: * XP practices * Development tools * Experience reports * Model driven development * Web development * Team management * Meta-Modeling * Security * New libraries & frameworks * Educational material * Embedded systems and robotics * SOA and Web services * Interaction with other programming languages Submissions due on 1 July 2010 Notification of acceptance on 5 of July 2010 More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2011 How to submit? ------------------ Pay attention: the places are limited so do not wait till the last minute to apply. Prospective presenters should submit a request to board(a)esug.org AND stephane.ducasse(a)free.fr following the template below. Please use this template since the emails will be automatically processed! Subject: [ESUG 2011 Developers] + your name First Name: Last Name: Email where you can always be reached: Title: Abstract: Bio: Any presentation not respecting this form will be discarded automatically Innovation Technology Award ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We are proud to announce the 6th Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete. This year we will request 3-5min videos. More information at http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2011/Innovation+Technology+Awards Student Volunteer Program ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you are a student wanting to attend ESUG, have you considered being a student volunteer? Student volunteers help keep the conference running smoothly; in return, they have free accommodations, while still having most of the time to enjoy the conference. More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2011 http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2011/Student+Volunteers+program We hope to see you there and have fun together. Ze ESUG board_______________________________________________ Board mailing list Board(a)lists.esug.org

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