On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:48 AM, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name> wrote:
This is a very sad thread. It started with a nice idea to talk about and it became more ridiculous with every single reply. I don't understand why everybody is so 110% confident what is the right thing to do if it turns out that we are all completely clueless? How can we dare even to speak against someones ideas? We don't have tons of ideas and need to select. And we don't need _one_ idea!
Writing a user friendly CMS is not _the_ idea but it is an idea. It doesn't help to shift perspective either to the low level side, the business side or the end user side. It is an idea and it is good. Looking at the current smalltalk development than I can just state that it flurishes at least in the open source corner. From an end user perspective neither pharo, seaside, pier or FFI has a value in itself. But all of these are a good foundation to enable people with ideas to produce wonderful products. I think to do marketing you need something to show. And if we are not the ones with the market breaking ideas than we should focus building the good tools and attract developers. Good applications will follow.
Mostly agree. But good tools is not enough to attract developers. We have to show how good they are - that means more blogs, tweet, screencasts, documentation .... so newbies can learn how to use them. For example I know that in Pharo there are powerful tools - I don't know how to use them, there's almost no comment, documentation, .... Metacello has done it right. Help, recipes, tutorials are here - I can learn advanced stuff in a couple of hours. A community is like a kitchen garden. You have to do a little everyday to make it grow. Yes, marketing is good. Talking about how marketing should be done is not.
Analyzing markets, building a product for it and advertize might work but it is a corporate view. Open source devlopment works the opposite way most of the time. So what is better? Isn't that dependent on the fact if you are inside or outside corporate wise. Reading 'the tipping point' is sure a good idea but I observed it made a lot of people think they know "how success works" and they just need to find any idea/product that is willing to fit in. But you can't copy success stories easily.
Open source doesn't mean no marketing - indeed to me it seems successful open source project has really good marketing from their user / developer base: people using it and write about it to say it's great and how to use it, make it easy to setup. LAMP stack is a good example I think: they were not blasting technologies, but were easy to setup, lot of tutorials, easy to get in. So we all should focus more on what we can _do_ instead of distracting the
motivaton of those that are willing to do something. I'm not a professional smalltalker but I spend a vast amount of my (spare) time in a lot of things smalltalk and try to build my small business. Without having faith, love and passion I could do J2EE instead.
Oh I'm doing mostly PHP for one year ;) But the more I learn about Pharo the more it get into my workflow. It seems to me it's easier to get into Smalltalk now than it was two years ago when I discovered it. Cheers, Laurent ranting end.
Norbert
Am 21.03.2011 um 22:09 schrieb Julian Fitzell:
Agreed. Smalltalk is not helped by trying to show everyone how much better we can redo what they've already done. We need to borrow what we can, integrate where we're able, compromise when necessary, and remain stubbornly unique only where our core values are at stake. That still leaves us plenty of room to shine and makes it more likely the other kids will let us play in their sandboxes too.
Julian
On 3/21/11, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 4:59 AM, Julian Fitzell <jfitzell@gmail.com> wrote:
Completely agreed, Helge.
I also have to wonder if the Smalltalk community would really benefit as much as everyone seems to think from having a "successful CMS written in Smalltalk". Does anyone who uses Wordpress care much what language it is written in? I guess there could be some vague peripheral benefit in terms of the appearance of acceptability, but really the only way to have a successful CMS is to write a good CMS, and at that point people are judging the product, not the language it was written in.
So, sure, someone could go create a great, free CMS with Smalltalk. But why do we as a community feel a need to champion the idea? Is it just that we want to be able to use our favourite language to write CMS plugins?
How much more effective to enable one to write plugins in Smalltalk and then plug them into existing CMS systems. Insularity and lack of interoperability can hobble Smalltalk. Emphasis on interoperability in general and the FFI in particular. These are the multipliers that will cause greater adoption and penetration. Reimplementing an insular and there-by inferior version of something already in existence is pointless. Providing a platform that allows us to join in with the world is essential.
best, Eliot
Julian
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Helge Nowak <hknowak@yahoo.de> wrote:
Janko and ariliquin: very well said!
The original poster's intention was to create a Smalltalk based CMS as successful as the leading open source ones. This can only be reached by making the system easily accessible to end users, not developers. Developers are a minority. They don't decide on what will be used as an end user tool in companies, organizations and communities.
If we think Pier and Scribo shall be end user tools they need end user UIs. If we don't think so we have to accept the fact that their target audience is the Smalltalk fraction of the developer community. As Ralph said: marketing is thinking about your market first and then build, advertize and distribute your offfering to your target segment's needs and expectations. And don't forget your return on investment! Without ROI people will soon leave because no-one can afford to just spend.
My 2 € Cents Helge ________________________________ Von: Janko Mivšek <janko.mivsek@eranova.si> An: ESUG Mailing list <esug-list@lists.esug.org> Gesendet: Montag, den 21. März 2011, 0:02:48 Uhr Betreff: Re: [Esug-list] Smalltalk hosting ...
Well said, thanks! I also beleive that a right way to the average "CMS user" friendly CMS is to hide Smalltalk as long as possible, until user is encouraged enough to customize his website in depth.
And in this customization is where we actually have an advantage over others. But, we need to build that non-Smalltalk front part first. There is no way to skip that part.
Best regards Janko
On 20. 03. 2011 23:49, ariliquin wrote:
I am a smalltalk newbie and interested in Smalltalk CMS. In answer to your question, from my point of view, I would like to say:
1. The ability to achieve something functional, say a my own custom main page, quickly and easily, is very encouraging (I haven't even begun to be able to do this in Pier etc, I am still wading through the concepts that are being presented, as opposed to the functionality that is made easily accessible).
2. The CMS is built on top of the Smalltalk platform, both an advantage for obvious reasons, yet a big disadvantage for this reason, from my point of view: I have to be familiar with Smalltalk BEFORE I can even approach the CMS. I don't mean familiar with the finer details and vast libraries, I mean familiar with the main screen and how to simple navigate, what the concepts are, the terminologies etc etc etc etc. NO other CMS requires this as obviously as Pier. The Smalltalk interface is NOT intuitive. I am not spoon feed everything. I have to research and digest and understand and grow to be able to do anything here. Yes, there are many simple concepts, however my experience was, upon seeing the Smalltalk environment in its totality, was to be completely lost.
3. Every other CMS like Wordpress, Concrete 5, Joomla are designed to present a user interface, not a programmer interface. Hence they are attractive to users immediately, in general. Yes a programmer can delve in and do things, but a user can get things they want done, point and click. (Although some of the interfaces can be overwhelming with navigations etc, also).
If you want a SmallTalk CMS that is Amazingly Attractive to End users and Programmers, this would be a good start for me:
Provide a USER interface that can be used to quickly produce publishable content (a lot of work, as many have pointed out, yet achieved by many other CMS projects)
Provide an underlying Programmer interface that gives simple and powerful access to the framework to allow extension and manipulation of the system (already there)
Identify the STRENGTHS of smalltalk, LEVERAGE these and present these, in a simple and meaningful way, to End USERS and programmers, to create a CMS with capabilities that others cannot match easily and that is Attractive because of its inherent nature and abilities.
Provide Tutorials, Video How-To's and Documentation from Within the CMS. This is were I am wondering how to do things, this should be were I find the answers also.
-- Janko Mivšek Aida/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si
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