From: Curt Hibbs <curt@...>
Date: 2002-04-30T04:03:07+09:00
Subject: RE: Squeak - was Re: RubyConf.new(2002) - ideas for agenda

Hal E. Fulton wrote:
>

Sorry Hal, I your renamed response to this thread after I created and sent
my own, otherwise I would have just responded to this one. Oh, well...

> > I was initially reluctant to leave Ruby and wanted to make sure we
> > ported everything back to the Ruby version but after using it for a
> > period of time, it is less of a priority.  I still think it's a good
> > idea and I would probably help someone get going on it and maybe even
> > get to it some day if I find enough time just sitting around with
> > nothing to do.  But the development environment of Squeak is so much
> > more pleasant - I can change a method just by clicking on it
> and the web
> > app is instantly using the new version... no need to find the right
> > file, find the method, change it, save the file, reload the app...  And
> > I can press a button on a remote web server admin page and it will load
> > in the new version.
>
> [snippage before and after]
>
> Julian,
>
> This sounds fascinating to me... I don't know SmallTalk and have
> never seen the Squeak environment.

Smalltalk is a great language. It was my first exposure to Object Oriented
programming. As a language it still holds its own to modern day OO languages
(its probably over 25 years old now!).

It has its blemishes, too (I won't go into that here). But I found Smalltalk
particularly frustrating for team development where you wanted to have good
version control (like CVS), because Smalltalk, traditionally, is not file
based.

I haven't used Squeak, but I would be interested to know how well it works
in a team development environment.

> Have you considered joining the FreeRIDE team? Or at least
> contributing ideas to it?

Or even just be user once we start making releases, and give us feedback.

> There is a rudimentary infrastructure design in place, but coding
> is proceeding very slowly over the past several weeks. You
> could still get in "on the ground floor" if you were interested.

Absolutely, our "ground floor" is wide open.

> I'm especially interested in making sure that the interface
> (particularly with respect to editing, scripting, and refactoring)
> is elegant and powerful. But we are not at the stage of defining
> that interface yet.

I think we will be at that stage in a month or so.

> Refer to Laurent Julliard's post of 4/29 if you're curious.

I missed this one, I'll have to go find it.

Curt