As my health is bad, I
write very little in this
section, but there is some
news about Squeak, about
which I wrote earlier in
13.
About Squeak,
15.
More about Squeak,
20.
Documented Squeak.
I suppose in what
follows that you have read
these or else are somewhat
familiar with Squeak or
Smalltalk.
First, what is a fork?
A new implementation of a
project, here Squeak, that
is itself a fork of
Smalltalk. Other forks of
Squeak are Tweak,
Cuis,
OpenCroquet, Sophie,
Pier,
Newspeak and quite a few
more.
Google will reveal all
if you search the above
with an added
"Smalltalk".
Indeed, if you are
interested in Smalltalk at
all, it makes sense to
look up these and other
projects: Some are
somewhat succesful or
useful, and some of those
that are not (yet) may be
theoretically interesting.
An example of a somewhat
succesful forked project
based on Squeak is Sophie,
that attempts to help one
built e-books; an example
of a theoretically
interesting fork is
Newspeak, that is an
attempt to improve
Smalltalk.
The Pharo in the title
is another recent fork of
Squeak by a group of its
developers who were not
happy with the drift and
development of Squeak.
About this much could
be said, and indeed has
been said on Squeak's
developers' mailing list,
quite often none too
friendly, and sometimes
also not honestly, I
think.
Indeed, as in most
socalled "communities",
the majority of "We The
People" when mailing to
the developers' list
nearly always pretends to
speak for "We" when they
mean "Me and my own
current interests", and
often uses that pretended
We-position
to scrub anybody who
disagrees as an opponent
of
"Us".
Personally, I can quite
well handle this
linguistically, logically
and satirically in
appropriate language -
which would explode a
mailing list like Squeak
if I honestly write what I
think, in the language I
consider appropriate,
fitting and fair, so I do
not do this,
and only read the list,
with a psychologically
trained logician's mind,
that does not make me
happier about people on
average.
So I will only make
four points here:
First, Squeak has been
very slowly developed over
the last years (regardless
of its direction(s)), in
part because it is quite
difficult to contribute
new source code, while it
may last years after such
source code as one has
succeeded in contributing
to a code-repository gets
evaluated and included or
not in a new Squeak
distribution as part of
the image.
Second, Squeak has been
very slowly developed the
last years because there
are far more wishes,
plans, e-mails and claims
than there are people with
the time, knowledge and
will to implement even a
small part of these.
Third, I will soon
remove
the Squeak Help
material on my site,
because I have reached the
conviction that those
naive to Smalltalk are
much better of with
VisualWorks (also freely
available, and hundreds of
times better working,
better looking and better
documented than Squeak, if
one is interested in
Smalltalk) or
with Pharo
if one is a
software-developer with
some prior knowledge of
Smalltalk.
Fourth, there is
currently a protracted
debate going on Squeak's
developers' list that
pisses me off thoroughly because of
its dishonesty and
impoliteness, for it is a debate
that seems to be
based on the following
kind of stance
"my balls are bigger
and better than yours
because I contributed more
to Squeak than you did, so
We The Squeakpeople think
that you-who-criticize-us
should shut up and fork
off!".
The current tone is
as follows - and I cite
from today's developers
list, a Briton writing to
a Briton in the tradition
of "Britons Never Will Be
Slaves" I suppose:
Remember, there are CCTV cameras everywhere in UK.
We watch you Keith. :P
Your attitude stinks. Really.
and also niceties like
The community is focusing on you rather than meaningful discussions.
For example, (X) spent quality time replying to your message rather than,
let's say,
commenting on my idea about a migration tool. I am spending the time
to write this letter. A real waste of time. (*)
So... I don't think
that I can waste more of
my own quality time,
and it seems to me that I
wasted a great lot
of my quality time
and quality brain -
also ill since 32 years,
always in pain, always
very poor, always
without any help any
invalid should and would
get in any real human
civilization -
to write documentation for
Squeak, which, it
seems to me, is still
not written because the
people who do make
money by way of Squeak or
Smalltalk and who
should be perfectly
well capable of writing
a properly documented
Smalltalk or Squeak in at
most a month of work (8
hour day) have simply
effectively refused
to do so, and refuse
to do so since 30 years or
so, apparently because
they feel too good to
write decent documentation
of code for others.
(**)
This was so in 2002
when Ted Kaehler tried to
yoke me to do the
documentation work
he should have
done
in
1980 at the latest,
and it is still the same
with Andreas Raab who is
currently lording Squeak
in the name of We The
People.
(***)
It was all an
intentional waste of my
quality time; my good
will; my capacities; and
my wish to do applied
mathematics and logic, so
it is better that people
like me fork off, as the
Squeaky developers phrase
this, to something better,
more rewarding, better
documented, and with more
polite would be
developers.
The people interested
in spending time and
effort on Smalltalk (that
still is theoretically a
very interesting system)
should spend it on
VisualWorks
