Arthur- Sorry, to be clear my point here on "toned down" was mainly about the specific statement you made, or rather the use of the specific word "pretense". I toned "pretense" down in my mind and replied more to specific issues relating to Smalltalk history and the funding of Squeak's core developers for a long time, and how Squeak has perhaps struggled to meet those objectives and hopes and aspirations for it (including many educaitonal ones) in part because of that history. :-) Whereas Python and its core community is in those ways on a more solid footing.
On a practical reality, I fired up the latest Squeak the other day and beyond my usual confusion with it relating to not mapping right mouse to popup a context-determined menu, :-) within minutes I was generating exceptions and so on as I tried to use other-than-trivial code included with the system (e.g. running the script to change underscores to colon equals, as well as some other things I forget off hand). I knew more than one person who in years past inspired by an Alan Kay presentation have tried Squeak only to encounter lots of bugs and problems with the core tools or trying to duplicate the demos he shows. Python never has done that to me. That's why I tend not to recommend Squeak to anybody but either die-hard Smalltalkers or people looking specifically to stretch their minds (which of course in theory includes kids :-). Whereas almost all the people I recommend Python to, on a practical basis, come away impressed and become users; Python fits into their ecosystem of tools and existing ideas fairly easily. That makes me sad because I know Smalltalk does not have to be that way; I know if I recommended, say, VisualWorks to people, they would not be experiencing those basic problems (and there is no reason Squeak's features like eToys or 3D Croquet could not run on such a stable platform, in theory). Unfortunately VisualWorks is not "free" in a "free as in freedom" sense the mainline Python version is. Of course I could fix Squeak's specific problems (as I see and experience them) with enough effort (in theory, with enough free time, which is limited at the moment), since the source is there. But then I am left with the licensing issues including the status of Disney contributions (which the community is slowly moving to resolve). And then I have my own fork to maintain, which is extra effort. I have wrestled with the Squeak community before on those issues, and realized, like any community and mailing list, a self-selection process has already gone on a long time there, so if you don't like Squeak how it already is, you are probably not hanging around on the main lists there. So there may be plenty of people who want a different Squeak, but most of them are not easily reachable (at least via the Squeak mailing list). The Python community is more inclusive by comparison, in the sense that Python as a language is much more agnostic on several points (including GUI and tools). So there is more room for experimentation there in some ways. Or, at least, there is a bigger potential audience of users and collaborators for a successful experiment, like perhaps the Pyglet OpenGL GUI system you mention. Python better supports such effort in some ways because of its modularity and community history (which I outlined previously). Some Squeakers have been so defensive for so long (often, though not always, with good reason) that innovation or adopting certain standards is harder there (witness a recent conflict about whether keyboard input focus should follow the mouse (Squeak) or follow a mouse click to shift focus (almost everyone else), not to say there isn't a good argument for the Squeak way). Plus, the copyright "contamination" issue sadly will always remain; there is no denying I have exposed to the source of commercial Smalltalk incidentally in the process of using them. I could never work in a Smalltalk-rebuilding "clean room" effort. In other free software development contexts, say, people working on GNU ClassPath as an alternative set of libraries to Java, the biggest "no, no" is to have seen a related vendor's source and then contribute to that project. Example: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/17/0155235 "Read the fine license, in particular the definition of Modifications in SCSL 2.3. Sun claims copyright on any code independently implementing any portion of the SCSL-licensed technology *if* you agree to their license. So please don't look at their code if you intend to contribute to free runtimes in the future. It's the same as Microsoft's Shared Source in a different wrapping." There is probably almost no significant Squeaker who has not been exposed to the core code of one of VisualWorks, Smalltalk/V, Dolphin, VisualAge, or a few other commercial Smalltalks. Of course, how well an overly broad attempt against Squeak would stand up in court is a different issue; it certainly also would not play well politically in terms of negative PR to the vendor. In some ways, in the end, this single issue may mean the death of free Smalltalks long term (barring one major vendor freeing their version) -- the fact that Smalltalk was "open source" (taken literally) embodied in proprietary products for so long but not "free". Which is one reason Richard Stallman dislikes the term "open source" as it deemphasizes the freedom aspect. :-) In essence, the history of Smalltalk is "brilliance shackled". Since its conception, the history of Python is "pragmatism unshackled". :-) Still, I abhor having to, like Daedalus, turn away from brilliance for pragmatic reasons, even though I know what happened to his son Icarus when he did not. :-) http://thanasis.com/icarus.htm Especially considering Python was designed as a workhorse, and Squeak was supposedly designed for kids and education (both the focus of this mailing list, and an interest of mine). [Of course the metaphor is inverted here since Smalltalk is really the older of the two and if anything more like conceptually the father of Python. I need another myth where the father encounters disaster the son avoids because the sun is plugged into a different community spirit or Zeitgeist. :-)] --Paul Fernhout Arthur wrote: > Paul D. Fernhout wrote: >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>>Squeaks pretense issues, and its licensing issues, are - by the way - not >>>unrelated >>>when you look at it. >>> >>Sometimes I think something like that myself. :-) >> >>But, to elaborate on your point a little more (in a toned down way :-): >> > It is hard to know how to respond. > > I don't know how to tone down on this particular issue any more than I > have. If you want to call it an obsession, OK. You can search the > archives of edu-sig and find me obsessively attacking Kay and not Squeak > itself, but Kay's positioning of Squeak, from the earliest days here, > and suffering attacks here for doing so as: > > a) being presumptuous. > b) being irrelevant. > > Let's leave it that I fully accept the standard history, the importance > of Smalltalk, the role of Kay during the period of history which you > recount. > > And the fact that he is un-shy about recounting it, and having others > recount it on his behalf, provides him with certain powers, but with > certain responsibilities. > > I am not a fan of how he has handled that power and those responsibilities. > > But that if I have not yet successfully communicated why I firmly > believe his later efforts, his later approach and most particularly his > later "rap" is more destructive than productive, I guess that I have to > resign myself to the fact that I never will. > > I assure you, I am making perfect sense to myself - however. _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
