More on marketing...
Sean Allen
If you do a google search right now for 'Why should I use smalltalk?'
the 2nd item goes to a stack overflow question about why don't ruby
programmers use smalltalk. The accepted, number one answer that got
tons of votes includes gems like this:
--
The class library of most of the main smalltalk implementations
(VisualWorks, VisualAge etc.) was large and had reputation for a
fairly steep learning curve. Most key functionality in Smalltalk is
hidden away somewhere in the class library, even basic stuff like
streams and collections. The language paradigm is also something of a
culture shock for someone not familiar with it, and the piecemeal view
of the program presented by the browser is quite different to what
most people were used to.
The overall effect is that Smalltalk got a (somewhat deserved)
reputation for being difficult to learn; it takes quite a bit of time
and effort to become a really proficient Smalltalk programmer. Ruby
and Python are much easier to learn and to bring new programmers up to
speed with.
--
And there is no counterpoint to that. The difference between the ruby
and smalltalk class libraries is pretty small but.. this went totally
unrefuted.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/187380/why-use-ruby-instead-of-smalltalk
We need people out there who address these things.
I will admit that I am a horrible stack overflow user and rarely go
there but @srbaker got me to say, yes, I will take this on. I have a
pinned chrome tab now on the smalltalk tagged questions on Stack
Overflow and I will do my best to answer them and correct what I think
it incorrect info.
More rambling from
-Sean-
Brian Rice
-Brian T. Rice
Sean Allen
squeak source and the library in question
has no website other than squeak source AND there is no documentation
for the library there.
Getting smalltalk projects onto github et al seems really important to me.
1. github is awesome in its social aspect.
2. github is basically surfacing your code so people can find stuff
and see what is going on.
It would be nice if there was a way to export out stuff to git BUT...
that leads to the problem that
the chunk format is well... atrocious for a human.
We are just doing chunk format right now for Redline Smalltalk because
I'm the only one who currently has to suffer it
and that is something I'm willing to do as we have more important
things to get done but James Ladd and I have had
discussions with a number of people about coming up with a more human
friendly syntax. A couple people
suggested the GNU Smalltalk format but I think that can be improved
upon further. While better than straight chunk
it isnt a whole lot better in my opinion.
If anyone has ideas on a good, readable format that ruby, java, python
etc people would not find horrendous, please
let us know as we feel that is going to be a vital part of marketing
Redline. I also hope that if we come up with a good
format that we could contribute back that as an addition to pharo so
if people using pharo wanted to get themselves
on github, there would be a format other than the chunk format that
could go up. At which point, any other smalltalk
could decide to adopt it if they want.
I don't really hold out a ton of hope that the commerical smalltalks
would follow with that but you never know.
As to the technical social sites and not piping up, I think that
dropping an email here saying, hey there is a conversation
going on at X url about Y topic and I don't feel knowledge enough to
address it, can someone jump in, would be a great idea.
The library problem is def something that can't be sidestepped and was
one of the big reasons that we are doing Redline.
Running on the jvm ( or the clr ) really does remove a ton of library
issues once the while interop thing is addressed.
I personally am looking forward to finding a way to be able to use
clojure's persistent immutable data structures from within smalltalk.
-Sean-