[FRIAM] Seaside (Smalltalk web development framework)

[Joshua Thorp]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 3:17 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> While possible, the idea that
> university or hobby software can be better than software developed  
> by a
> multi-billion dollar corporations doesn't jump out as a likely  
> scenario.
>
> Interoperability is God, and failing to provide it is a fine reason  
> for
> a software project to fail!

If you are a multi-billion dollar company why interoperate?  Just  
declare the rest of the market for suckers and dilettantes.   
Unfortunately for billion dollar companies its turtles all the way  
down and they struggle mightily just to interoperate with their own  
products--and largely fail.

Seems to me the very concept of a multi-billion dollar company as  
software producer put up against small groups of hackers is absurd  
anyway.  It really hinges on the make up of the small teams of people  
inside that large capital structure that are doing the real work  
anyway.  Plenty of fine coders exist inside and out of such large  
companies and depending on management and marketing or acquisitions  
they may have more or less time to deliver a finished product.  But  
more often than not,  though a billion dollar company may be good at  
well crafted design process, I would bet they find their best ideas  
from  those who do something for the sake of art as an amateur,  or  
to push forward the frontier of ideas as a scholar.

'Can't we all just get along?'

What we are talking around here is just as personal as race and  
politics--where do you fall on the artist<--scientist-->engineer  
spectrum.  Engineers are most comfortable in slow moving vehicles  
with plenty of restraints and air bags.  Artists are most happy in  
new concept cars that are untried and untested--they might die but at  
least it will be a statement of some sort.  And of course testing  
cars is for scientists.  (Some may quibble with this,  but I would  
have to say check out the difference between math departments in an  
Engineering school versus an arts and sciences school -- Engineers  
are most comfortable working with equations from a table and  
processes from a lab manual,  scientists get a big kick out of  
deriving equations that are already in that engineering text.  And I  
think artists are largely there for the drugs and the women..)  I  
couldn't imagine the same languages appealing to all three crowds.   
And why should they?

We can certainly tell a lot by the tools a person uses (and the  
company they keep).  And if you don't like engineers I would say  
better to avoid C++,  project managers,  and multi-billion dollar  
companies.

Another angle to this whole mess is that it is possible to write very  
unstable and largely un-useful code in C++,  it just takes a long  
time to get there.  If you want, you can get there faster in python.

--joshua

  
  
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