Hey Ben,
I leave it with this answer, as you suggested, thank you for picking up
the ball!
First, I admit again, I have thought about it one whole day, if and how
I should do this "intervention", which is absolutly not my usual style,
but I decided for myself, to be intentionally blunt, provocative, and
parade his virtual presence around here in front of all Pharo users...
In the hope that this kicks off something and, of course, that it will
not be the final word.
I tried to avoid being seen as the hurt one (seems, that I did not
quite succeed with this). Javascript is most popular, so R.K. Eng
cannot damage this platform with his – let's say... – "opinions",
but he can damage Smalltalk and its small community. So I started with
making noise, not with the story from my client's managers, who
dismissed Pharo, because of his highly ranked Google search results –
last year (But in fact, I was annoyed two days ago, I was googling
actually a very specific topic about compiler optimization in
prototype-based OO, and R.K. Engs ill-informed superficial "lecturing"
rants showed up again at third or fourth place, I think, sigh).
Short answers to your questions:
* Yep, one main concern is his connection between Smalltalk advocacy
and discrediting other languages – or making dogmatic, condescending
and un-empirical statements of strong typing over weak typing, or
class-based over prototype-based OO etc. Just separate that clearly. JS
has huge momentum (IMHO absolutly justified), and it would be advisable
to say something like "Hey, you like JS? Then look at ST, it is similar
but the 'original thing', more pure, and takes the basic concepts even
further".
* I have to correct myself concerning "wrong statements about ST": it
is not so much, that he writes "wrong" things about Pharo, but it is
more that R.K.Eng often uses old 1980ies marketing language (like "It
is just objects all the way down!"). That was nice back then, a
completely new way of thinking, but today, a whole bunch of languages
has sprung up from this legacy (dynamic, OO, introspection etc.), among
them JS, and have taken the concepts to new forms. His superficial
knowledge combined with the over-confident and condescending attitude
scares away interested people. The quote I mentioned ("just object all
the way down") was one of the blog topics the managers, to whom I tried
to advertise Pharo, found ridiculous and laughed at it ("does it work
by magic then? What are the primitives and basic value types then?"
etc).
* Pushing ones own projects is fine, again. But all his publicity
effort have a strong taste (maybe it is cultural), that he wants
control public perception of the community (and thus steering it).
Being "Mr. Smalltalk" is extremly presumptive, in German it would
usually refer to an official spokesperson (I think actually, for native
English speakers, too...). And if I remember correctly, he did not get
a warm welcome, true, but before that, he showed up without any
Smalltalk background and just proclaimed himself the new
project/marketing manager, without ever asking, what the community
actually needs and what the current state is.
* The top search results in Google are a major concern for every FOSS
project...
* If a person constantly and loudly points out that he is "altruistic",
and that his self-initiated work (unasked, and reasonably rejected in
part) would be worth a lot of money, than this is the opposite of
altruistic... Again, maybe a cultural thing.
But yes, I like to see becoming this a success story.
Thank you! M
Am Fr, 1. Mär, 2019 um 6:15 NACHMITTAGS schrieb Ben Coman
<b...@openinworld.com>:
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your thoughtful followup.
On Fri, 1 Mar 2019 at 19:59, Michael Zeder <p...@michael-j-zeder.de>
wrote:
I have carefully thought about, if I should really go publicly
against one person within the community, and to start this "tirade",
including the possibility that this causes an escalation, of course
you cannot/must not silence a person ("Streisand" effect, did not
know the term, but very fitting). But I decided that this kind of
public conflicts is what is needed (and will make the community look
better, not worse), _if_ a certain point is reached.
I certainly subscribe to the tenet "Community standards do not
maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying
them, visibly, in public." [1]
And I understand the tension in deciding to do so, with the
accompanying risk of making things worse (been there myself)
For me what weakened your first post was the name calling and sense
you were coming from a position of hurt with a story you needed to
justify by "making him wrong". :)
Much better second time round.
[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losing
I stand by it, but have reconsidered some points:
* I do (did) not call for _immediate_ exclusion, but an
"admonishment" that if certain behaviour is not about to change
fundamentally, the community will have to act (by publicly
separating this individual out).
* Take older articles down, which start flamewars against other
languages, or more precise: separate them from Smalltalk advocacy!
If he wants to flame JS (for its various birth defects), fine, but
don't connect that with pro-Smalltalk articles, for example.
That seems a reasonable position and a good way to frame it.
* Community efforts shall follow follow some community consensus.
Core developers are no dictators, of course, but they are the ones
knowing, what the state of the project is, and where _their_ work
will lead to. Constantly ignoring this common guidance is
detrimental to the community. So either, learn Smalltalk core coding
and challenge the leadership, or do accept that there is some common
agenda (and there are lots of open tasks: writing tutorials,
documentation, make old scientific research available, linking and
connecting showcases).
His earlier articles got hammered and its natural that created a
defensive position for him to disconnect from the community
leadership.
The trick as for everyone is to not carry those forever and try
starting anew.
* Public opinion does matter. The fact I mentioned Google SEO was
indeed the starting point for me, to get into or start this flame
war. Here is my story:
Two of my clients (medium-sized enterprises) are classical C++/C#
Windows development companies. I advertised Pharo to them for an
_internal_ tool (their commerical products won't change to Smalltalk
of course, but for their own internal dev tasks, Pharo whould have
been a nice fit). When the managers got back to me, they had googled
it, and told me, this thing sounds very dubious ("unseriös"). I
enquired, what they had read, and they told me, this "spokesperson"
(sic!!!) sounds like a trolling script kid, and they can't employ
something which is developed (sic!!!) by such people. After some
explanation, I managed to convince them, that this person is just a
lonely person, who showed up out of nowhere, is not involved in the
actual work, and just produces himself on the internet. But too
late, their impression on Smalltalk was already formed by R.K.Engs
"blogs" (in the meantime, they rank on top in Google search result).
You should have led with that !!!! An experience has a lot more
power than an opinion.
When I did some research of my own yesterday, and saw again, that
R.K. Engs dubious blog entries were listed on top, I decided to take
action.
I like to answer to your balanced and thoughtful responses:
You may disagree about *how* he does such work, the actual content,
for sure, but that's a feedback better directed to mr. Eng himself.
R.K. Eng has made it clear in the past many many times in uncertain
wording, that he is not willing to follow community advice in these
matters, if his gut is telling him something different...
Some of that community advice has been delivered fairly
confrontation-ally and not really conducive to having someone listen.
Hopefully I've expressed a balanced enough position that this
doesn't draw too many responses.
yes, you did. thank you.
I agree "Mr Smalltalk" is quite a presumptive title, but really
anyone following the mail lists soon gets an idea of who are the
community merit leaders.
Well, I disagree, based on the experience, I have written down
above. The internet is very much about who is in the center of the
focus (SEO/social media). Anybody new to Smalltalk will at first
glance identify our community with this "spokesperson" (as I have
experienced with two people, last year already btw)
Point taken.
Maybe it is a language thing, but "Mr. Smalltalk" is _extremely_
presumptive (in German, it means the embodiment of the denoted
thing). If a person is not doing very very thorough reading of ages
old mail list discussions or is researching, that this person in
fact never committed any code to the repos, then any newcomer will
think, this "Mr. Smalltalk" is at least a versed and informed
Smalltalk developer (which, given his newbie questions he is
absolutely not).
Got it. So apart from fighting directly against his presumption to
the title (which seems difficult)
would cleaning some other-language-denigration from old articles go
some way towards mitigating your concern?
You are right he hasn't committed any code, but I've not actually
seen him claim credit for any code in Pharo, so this point seems
off.
true. but as I just wrote, that is what people presume, given his
way and manner of producing himself. If he wrote honestly wrote "I
am a fanboy, supporter and advocate of Smalltalk...", great! But he
claims he worked many many hours without a dime, but worth many
dollars, and had "tremendous success" in creating a new Smalltalk
wave.
I'm pretty by many-hours-without-a dime he meant his evangelism.
If it didn't come across like that, that is probably specific
copy-edit feedback that would be useful to him.
* ...is doing SEO to make Google show his own results before FOSS
community or sciences pages.
I think its equally likely that most in our community are too busy
coding to try getting articles ranked,
so its more lack of effort by most of us. Most of his articles
mention Pharo so people end up finding us anyway.
might be true (some criticism to the community agenda..? different
topic)
The thing is, the wrong information are getting more and more in the
focus of the internet, pushing aside the community-driven Pharo
sites (or real scientific papers or well-done tutorials).
I've read most of his articles. I don't think he gets much factually
wrong about Pharo (and has corrected those when pointed out).
It seems your main concern about wrong information is attacks on
other languages, which is fair.
Any money he gets for his writing is not anything that concerns me
personally. Those articles are his own effort.
Sorry, misunderstanding! Of course, he may earn with his writing,
whatever he gets for it.
I was referring to the "up-coming" Smalltalk Coding Competition.
btw, a few weeks ago when Richard asked for help to program the
competition, I volunteered.
I've criticized some of his articles, and maybe there are other
"better" the money could be spent,
but I admire he has stuck to his vision and think its a big thing he
has taken on.
If its going to happen anyway, for me its better to help make it a
success than a flop.
[Sidebar: I haven't managed to do much on it yet since I'm run ragged
on a personal development course until mid-April
that includes running a community project of my own...
https://www.nanpopcode.fun/]
Now, yes, that money doesn't go into his own pockets (would be
criminal fraud), but the thing is, he controls this money.
Who will be the judges? Who will set parameters for the competition?
Transparency?
What is the benefit that goes back into the community? Now, it is
fine, that he is pushing for things like that, but again, he is
doing it without synchronising this effort with what is needed by
the community.
He got a reasonable number of supporters on GoFundMe (I wasn't one at
the time),
and I believe the majority of the money comes from a few companies
so I expect its really their opinion that counts about how their
money is spent.
* ...denies community leadership by merit (Pharo core developers
do know, what they have created and where they want to go in the
future,
I don't see him claiming leadership of our community or trying to
set our agenda.
He just didn't let community criticism of his writing slow him
down.
All I observed is that several people bit him and he bit back -
fairly usual sort of poor communication on both sides (including
me).
Well, as written above, the manner of his web appearance is
implicitly a claim of community leadership. Not an exclusive one of
course, but he wants to be perceived of one of the most important
persons in the community (he told so many times, explicitly). And
given my experience, read above, this had already a (negative)
success with it.
And I think he is setting agenda: "Make Smalltalk great/mainstream
again" is the baseline, and that is something, only the core dev
team and the community as a whole can decide/make happen (I love
Smalltalk, but he promises wrong things, so if, just for example,
C++/Qt devs or _modern_ JS devs have a first look at Smalltalk with
the expectation they could already do the same thing as in their
usual platforms, they will be disappointed --> synchronize a
marketing agenda with what this great project currently is about,
but he is not willing to cooperate with the core dev team)
Fair enough. Since in a couple of months I'll be helping him out,
I'll have an opportunity to raise these concerns with him.
Him swearing about a group of Pharo people is good ammunition to
bring to the mail list to support your point,
but I also see he was rather provoked. Overall I feel this
extract was better left in that small corner of the internet
rather than fan flames here.
:) Yeah... no! I think this is really a central point (so I put him
in the pillory here with intent). There is something called
community/FOSS ethics and structures.
He does not show _respect_ towards those people, who did the work,
but produces himself, and pushes for things, which the people who
devoted their work to this project, told him that it is
counter-productive. That is, in the long-run, a very dangerous
situation.
I agree, its not great. But he didn't get a warm welcome and some of
his early interactions were abrasive.
Considering two extremes, you can either be inclusive and hopefully
nurture/mold, or exclude and lose any chance at that.
Like a lot of things, the path is somewhere in the middle and needs a
bit of give and take on both sides.
PS: a side note on Javascript (with lower S). wether you love or
hate this quirky lovechild of Lisp and Self/Smalltalk, telling JS
developers they are stupid and that they should abandon powerful
Vue.js, for example, in favor of Amber Smalltalk [cudos to Amber
devs! great thing!]) is utterly stupid!
Agree. But banning everyone in the world for similar stupidity
would leave the internet awfully quiet.
Sure! Again: I am against silencing or banning anybody (and how
could you). But if this becomes unbearable, there needs to be a
public separation, so he does not drag the project down. People need
to speak up against such usurpation.
I appreciate the stand your are taking for the community.
I've gained from your share of your workplace experience.
(which in the end are only a self-serving, ego-centric,
attention-greedy campaign to promote "Mr. Smalltalk" himself, a
total newbie, who claims credit for the work of others).
Your repeated "claims credit for the work of others" is quite
provocative and I haven't noticed this in his writings. Could you
provide a link?
See above, maybe it is a cultural thing, but as I told in my
experience, all of his appearance screams for being recognized as
one of the most important persons in the community (he is
condescendingly mocking marketing efforts of the last 40 years,
claims that he is the one who will "make smalltalk great again"...)
Yes I am provocative this time, not my normal style (and I admit, I
was tripped-out by his provocative blog title "Even people who
understand prototypal programming do not like it – an inconvienent
truth"; that is dripping off arrogance and ignorance... And sheds a
bad light on Smalltalk, with which he wants to be identified in the
web)
Got it.
Let me ask to park this thread for the moment, because it can be
quite distracting if everyone chips in an opinion.
I think you've made some fair points and I'll put myself on the line
to discuss them with Richard when I start helping him with his
competition project.
cheers -ben
