I'll second Gilad's thoughts. I am familiar with VisualWorks and VA, as well as no longer existent dialects like Digitalk's. However, the several times I have tried to "get into Squeak", I've landed in a UI that doesn't work like those I am familiar with, so it seems much more difficult to learn "the Squeak way". The only tutorial was about basic Smalltalk syntax and offered no guidance for Squeak. Perhaps there are some "getting started with Squeak" guides, but Squeak itself doesn't lead you to them. We can get any number of people to try a given Smalltalk implementation, but once they get there, we need to ensure they can get around in it (if they already think Smalltalk) and can learn how the Smalltalk way differs from what they are used to otherwise. Like many people, once I account for sleep, family life, and work, there isn't a lot of time left for struggling to learn something new, no matter how popular or interesting it seems to be. We need to reduce the effort to get over the first hurdles. -----Original Message----- From: esug-list-bounces@lists.esug.org [mailto:esug-list-bounces@lists.esug.org] On Behalf Of Gilad Bracha Sent: October-30-10 7:09 PM To: Geert Claes Cc: esug-list@lists.esug.org Subject: Re: [Esug-list] Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code Hi Geert, Rob and others, On Oct 30, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Geert Claes wrote:
We do have Newspeak listed on http://www.world.st/implementations so
everyone
should make some time :)
Thanks for that and for the good intentions! If I may, I'll make one more observation. This thread (and similar ones, oft repeated among Smalltalkers) bemoans the fact that others do not see the beauty of Smalltalk. What I liked about this thread was that Smalltalkers were engaged in serious self examination. There seemed to be a realization that some things need real changes. Perhaps as part of this self examination, one can see how hard it is to get out of one's comfort zone. The effort of engaging with and learning something different is more than most people can find the time and energy for - even when the differences are relatively modest, as in the case of Newspeak. Some of the reasons some of you cannot get around to really getting involved with Newspeak are quite analogous to the reasons why your Pythonista or Java (or whatever) colleagues cannot get serious about Smalltalk. I am well aware that this is not a terribly actionable observation. It's just the way it is. What one can do is identify weaknesses and work hard at fixing them, and hope that some people will find it worthwhile to become truly involved. Cheers, Gilad _______________________________________________ Esug-list mailing list Esug-list@lists.esug.org http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org