Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

This is April?

Not exactly golfing weather :/

We've got our first cut of Swallow up now - check out the website. There's a zip file to download (it's just a one file installation right now). We expect Mac and Linux support to follow soon.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, smalltalk

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at dealing with HTTP servers that require authentication - whether that means Basic or Digest. We also look at Proxy server support.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Scoble talks Semantic Web:

Basically Web pages will no longer be just pages, or posts. They’ll all be split up into little objects, stored in a database (a massive, scalable one at that) and then your words can be displayed in different ways. Imagine a really awesome search engine that could bring back much much more granular stuff than Google can today. Or, heck, imagine you could view my blog by posts with most inbound links.

This is in reference to Radar Networks, which is apparently in stealth mode (yawn). Here's the thing though: unless I misunderstand the above, I see two problems:

1. All kinds of possible copyright questions, depending on what (and how much) gets cached
2. The "meta-search" objection that Jason Calacanis brings up

I'd be curious to know how those things will get resolved, or why they aren't actually problems.

Technorati Tags: semantic-web

After the Ruby for Smalltalkers tutorial, Joseph Pelrine keeps things moving with "The Scrum Methodology":

Agile software development methodologies, XP being the most known one, are becoming more and more accepted. They take the different nature of software seriously and help in delivering usable software to the needs of the customer on time and on budget. At the same time minimizing risks. Scrum is an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work, a proven and successful project management methodology that fits nicely with agile processes - especially XP. We will show and explain the underlying principles. report from real life projects, and answer your questions about Scrum.

See you in Toronto!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Smalltalk Central has re-launched - and the feed technology behind it comes out of BottomFeeder :)

It's all explained here :)

Chris Petrilli coins a great phrase (see the title) in his post about online behavior:

Take, for example, “freedom of speech,” which has been a hallmark of the American experience for many years. There are some who, mistakenly, believe that it is an absolute right, without limit, and without restriction. It is not. One is not allowed to say things that specifically endanger other people’s lives, such as yelling “fire” in a crowded room. Additionally, one can not conflate the right to say something with the right to be heard. I might wish to say irrational and crazy things -- and often do -- but that does not require anyone around me to provide support, whether in the form of monetary commitments, or even a forum.

That's the point I've been trying to get across, with a few prominent people - like Scoble - just not getting it (see his update, near the bottom of the post). With freedom comes responsibility - and ceding the latter will not lead to more of the former. Quite the opposite, actually.

Technorati Tags: accountability, speech

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at customizing the way an object shows itself in a GUI widget, such as a listbox or dataset (grid).

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Monday at StS 2007 opens up with a three hour tutorial from Chad Fowler: Ruby for Smalltalkers:

Since its introduction in 2004, Ruby on Rails continues to make waves in the web development world. Released in a storm of hype, the Rails framework has drawn acclaim and criticism---from hero worship to FUD-laden negativity. Claims of Rails' 10x productivity increase were met with both skepticism and seemingly religious fanaticism. Love it or hate it, Rails has cast an industry-visible light on the dynamic language world Not surprisingly, Ruby on Rails is written in Ruby. Ruby borrows heavily from Smalltalk. Therefore, Smalltalkers have a serious advantage when approaching Ruby on Rails for the first time. This tutorial will exploit that advantage, presenting an overview of the Ruby on Rails framework from the perspective of someone who already understands the power of a real Object Oriented language and the many idioms which Ruby has borrowed from Smalltalk. You'll leave this fast-paced tutorial with the tools and understanding to use and explore Rails on your own.

See you in Toronto!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, ruby

In case you missed it, registration for Smalltalk Solutions 2007 is now live - head on over here to register for the conference. Note: If you go to the STIC site and sign up as a STIC site and sign up as a member, you'll get a 25% discount. There's a lot of great content - check out the schedule of talks and tutorials.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Ramon Leon makes a good point about learning Smalltalk:

Edward was lucky, he had a Smalltalker handy to show him the ropes, few have that opportunity. I’m still amazed by how many people think they can grok Smalltalk by seeing syntax examples. Smalltalk isn’t its syntax, it’s its environment. Smalltalk is a living world of running objects, there are no files, no applications, just what’s running. To understand Smalltalk, you have to either actually use it for a while, or have a seasoned Smalltalker demonstrate it to you. Reading sample code just won’t cut it.

While I can't guarantee a person at your shoulder, I can point out our free download, and the Smalltalk Daily screencasts to help you get started.

Hey, this is cool - as I write this, the "Industry Misinterpretations" podcast ranks 33rd in the Technology section of Podcast Alley. That's really cool:

If you like the podcast, head on over and throw a vote or review our way.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Travel has thrown my schedule off again - I forgot the logs report. BottomFeeder downloads went at a respectable clip last week: 268/day:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	543
Update	256
Mac X	164
Linux x86	150
Solaris	112
CE ARM	100
Mac 8/9	86
Windows98/ME	74
HPUX	72
Linux Sparc	63
Sources	63
AIX	62
SGI	52
Linux PPC	51
ADUX	23
CE x86	4

Up next: The HTML page accesses:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	47.7%
Internet Explorer	41.2%
Other	2.3%
MSN Bot	3.9%
MSRBOT	2.6%
Opera	2.3%

Opera keeps sneaking up - let's have a look at the Syndication Numbers:

Wow - IE usage is really rising - I guess the RSS support in IE 7 is good enough for a lot of people

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Internet Explorer	34.9%
Mozilla	17.1%
BottomFeeder	12.6%
Other	4.5%
BlogLines	5.3%
Net News Wire	4.4%
Google Feed Fetcher	4.1%
Safari RSS	2.7%
Vienna	2.6%
NewsGator	1.8%
Feeds on Feeds	1.6%
Akregator	1.4%
RSS Bandit	1%
Python	1%
News Fire	1%
MSN Bot	1%
JetBrains	1%
Jakarta	1%
SharpReader	1%

David Sifry has more details than you'll need :)

Technorati Tags: blogosphere

In building a Widgetry based runtime (the Twitter client that Michael and I have been working on), I've learned a couple of things that you'll run into. Mind you, these are transient issues that will go away as engineering deals with them (they'll be addressed as Widgetry moves into production) - but if you're out on the leading edge, here they are:

• When using the RTP to prepare your GUI app, for "Action on last window close", don't set "Shutdown image" - instead, set "Continue Processing". Then set up your own quit behavior
• Specify a custom NoWindowBlock - otherwise, when you open Widgetry based dialog boxes, you'll be in for a nasty surprise

The problem in both cases is that RTP currently makes assumptions about the kinds of Windows you have open, and doesn't "see" Widgetry based Windows. So in case (1) above, your image will quit as you start it. Very annoying :)

In case (2), dialogs prompt the NoWindowBlock as they close, which again, sees "no windows" and offers to open the launcher or quit - not what you want. I used this in my build script:

WindowManager noWindowBlock: [:mgr | true].

Not sophisticated, but it gets the job done for my little application.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, widgetry, pollock

Charles Miller laments the architected Matrix :)

Technorati Tags: SOA

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at customizing the "print" behavior of objects - meaning, how they display themselves in an Inspector.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

We are just about ready for the next release of Cincom Smalltalk: VisualWorks 7.5, ObjectStudio 7.1.2, and a beta of ObjectStudio 8 - ObjectStudio 8 will be going out in the summer. The release has been delayed, mostly due to some issues with the Mac VM. Good news on that front though: due to some hard work by our VM team: John Sarkela, Andres Valloud, Sean Glazier, and Peter Hatch, it looks like the major issues have been solved. You can expect to see the release shipping before Smalltalk Solutions (which starts on April 30).

Technorati Tags: Cincom, smalltalk, VisualWorks, ObjectStudio

I've posted the update - new posts hitting the Silt server will now also add an update to my Twitter stream (my screen name there is "jarober" if you want to add me). We are fairly close to releasing an 0.1 of the Swallow client for Twitter - Michael is constructing a website. It's all coming together :)

Technorati Tags: web2.0, Twitter

Chris Petrilli is unimpressed with Microsoft's ability to issue security updates in a timely fashion

Technorati Tags: Windows

I have the patches ready to roll in, but don't have time to do that right now. Later tonight though: every time I push a new post up, a Twitter update will roll. Anyone on the server with a Twitter account will be able to do the same thing, if they want to go to settings and add the Twitter account info.

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Scoble notes the joint statement from Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke - which is a very positive thing to my way of thinking. While they disagree about some things (who doesn't?), it looks like they understand each other now. That's all to the good, but this (below) from Scoble just drives me nuts:

One thing, though, that I won’t support: more rules or laws or, even, more “guidelines.” I value my freedom of speech. This is not a “theory” for me. My mom grew up in Nazi Germany where free speech wasn’t allowed. My wife grew up in Iran, where free speech still isn’t allowed. You’re definitely not allowed to attack the government in Iran, even today

Asking people to treat each other with dignity is not a call for governmental censorship. Being judgmental about bad acts and bad actors is not an attempt to shut down free speech, any more than indicting someone for a stampede following a false cry of "fire" in a theater is. I wish more people understood that, instead of having the utterly bizarre belief that we must have tolerance for everything and anything. We don't. Guidelines are a good thing - manners are nothing more than guidelines, for instance. Shall we rid ourselves of those, too, in the name of "more freedom"?

Technorati Tags: speech

There will be a delay in getting Smalltalk Daily out today - I have a bunch of house cleaning to get done - we have a bunch of guests coming in soon. So, peruse the backlog :)

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

This story from ArsTechnica - if it holds up - is very encouraging:

EMI will announce on Monday that it will be freeing much of its catalog from the shackles of DRM. The Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter," reports (sub. required) that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be present at the announcement in London and that the music will be sold through the iTunes Store and possibly other online outlets.

If that happens, it'll be the first big nail in the coffin of DRM. I fully expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth before we get to the end, but this is a good sign.

Technorati Tags: music

Tim Bray gives an excellent rundown on responsibility as it relates to website content - some people would do well to read it. Possibly over and over again, until they actually understand it.

Along those lines, I read Tim O'Reilly's outline of a blogger's code of conduct - I'm utterly baffled as to how anyone could object to it. It really boils down to the rules most of us learned in kindergarten.

Technorati Tags: behavior

Here's a question Jason Calacanis could have asked Evan: "Blogger is about 75% splogs, and Odeo has major problems with keeping track of valid feeds. Should we expect Twitter to be any different, and if so, why?"

Evan discusses the details of the Web's latest love affair with Twitter , and also shares many interesting insights into his former projects - Blogger and Odeo .

I finished this book while I was flying back from the UK - it's very thought provoking. I'll have to look into this further, but it seems that convential wisdom on pre-Columbian America (north and south) differs between the general population and the paleontologists. Amongst the latter group, there seems to be a growing consensus that the Americas were much more highly populated than we were taught in school - and they didn't exactly live "lightly on the land", either. Within the limits of the technology they had, they did a fair amount of "terraforming" of their own. Which is hardly surprising - people are people, and we always try to change our surroundings to benefit ourselves.

The section on Amazonia is particularly interesting - the "Stone Age" tribes that we thought had been living in a "state of nature" since time immemorial may instead have been remnant populations - cast "back in time" via catastrophic population loss in the wake of the various European diseases - diseases they had no resistance to.

Anyway, it's a great book - I highly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: history, Pre-Columbian

Well, this is cool - many of my desktop applications are now Cincom Smalltalk Apps:

BottomFeeder for syndication, TypeLess for IRC, and Swallow for Twitter. It's all good :)

Technorati Tags: desktop

A few years ago, some of the April Fool's day posts were inventive enough to be funny. Now? It just all seems so forced.

I might be able to do a test build of Swallow today - it's looking pretty nice now that Michael has pushed the new multi-line edit control out to all the tabs. Here's a look:

A real release is at least 1-2 weeks away. We are building this in VW 7.5, which will be released before the end of this month.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, Twitter

Scoble - and I have to admit, many other people - are utterly, utterly confused about freedom of speech:

I was going to not blog until Monday, but I saw something today that just has to be blogged about. Seriously, on Monday I’ll be on CNN with Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke talking about this week’s events. I spoke against more rules or other infringments on our freedom of speech. No matter how vile or disgusting that speech is. That said, I reserve my right to take a week off to point out the rotten strawberries sitting on our meme shelf.

There is no requirement to defend vile speech, nor is there a problem with individuals condemning vile speech. The only thing to worry about is when government tries to restrict your speech - and mind you, incitement to violence isn't protected as free speech, either. It's not a restriction on your freedom when your ideas get attacked by other people - and it most certainly is not a restriction on your freedom when you get condemned for out of bounds behavior.

Look at it like this: if the crap aimed at Kathy Sierra had been done in person, would you be defending it? If not, why are you defending the same thing done online behind a mask of anonymity?

One of the nice things about the Swallow (Twitter client) project that Michael and I have been working on is the fact that we decided to make it a Widgetry (Pollock) project. I hadn't really worked in Widgetry before, so it's been a learning experience - especially the lack of a GUI builder :)

Still, it's gone pretty well. Here's one of the things that nicer in Widgetry than it was in Wrapper: keyboard handling. Say you have an input field, and you want to look for a specific character. In Wrapper, you had to install a keyboardHook block on the controller, and then write all the handling code in the block (or in methods called from the block. In Widgetry, we register to get an Announcement:

	(self paneAt: #input) inputField 
		when: KeystrokeAboutToBeProcessed
		send: #possibleCREvent:
		to: self.

The pane in question is a combo-box, so I first grabbed the input field and then waited for the Announcement (which is an actual object). Here's the handler:

possibleCREvent: announcement
	"if the key pressed is a CR, then send the message"

	| key |
	key := announcement keystroke key.
	key = Character cr ifTrue: [self sendStatusNow].

Which seems more straightforward to me than the old keyboard handler setup - for one thing, I don't need to remember whether to return the keyboard event or nil :). Anyhow, it's a nice little project, and a nice experiment.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, Widgetry

Dave Winer continues to demonstrate that he lacks a moral core. Here's a tip: Defending indefensible behavior is not a profile in courage.

April Fool's is starting early this year: go check out the early silliness from TechCrunch.

We've been working on our Twitter client - here's a screenshot of the tool with our new drop down list of messages that we've sent previously:

It's coming along nicely - we should have a first release ready shortly.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, smalltalk

I spoke to Dave Buck last week while I was at SPA 2007 - since I posted the separate conversation with Michael last week, I held this one until now. We discussed two things in the main:

• Some email feedback from our listeners
• What's coming up at Smalltalk Solutions - in particular, what Dave is presenting there

Next week, we'll be back with a show focusing on Smalltalk Solutions 2007, which we are all attending. We'll likely do a first ever "all in the same room" podcast from there.

Technorati Tags: StS2007, smalltalk

Vorlath is inventing "problems" with closures that I haven't seen. We've had closures in Smalltalk for a long while now, and the issues he's afraid of just don't seem to come up. Perhaps it's those curly brace languages, and not the closures.

Michael has been busy with the new client control for Swallow:

Technorati Tags: Twitter, smalltalk

I'm interested in some feedback from people - specifically, people who have dealt with Cincom (whether it was the Smalltalk group or not). I'd like you to tell me two things:

• What have you liked most about your interactions with Cincom?
• What have you liked least about your interactions with Cincom?

Those are wide open questions - the answers could be on any aspect of Cincom you've dealt with. Feel free to post comments here, or send me email. I won't post email comments unless you specifically ask me to.

Well, my plants seem to think so, anyway - I sure hope we don't get a late snow storm to prove me wrong :) My daughter took some close-ups of the bulbs flowering:

The RIAA's decision matrix, revealed!

Technorati Tags: RIAA

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at one of the powerful features of Smalltalk's dynamic typing system: ad-hoc polymorphism.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, polymorphism

IBM is looking for a Smalltalker (VisualWorks) to help build Proviso:

Join the team developing Proviso. Proviso is a highly distributed and scalable stream processing platform for collecting, processing and persisting large volumes of network performance data. Our largest customers manage many terabytes of network performance data. Proviso was recently acquired by IBM Tivoli as part of an initiative to expand its presence in the telecommunications industry and become the leading provider of network management software.

Looks like the slot in in Lowell, MA.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

I should mention the "outputs" of the Smalltalk tutorial that I did last Sunday. The SPA conference (and Ot before it) has always been big on session outputs - the idea being that other people should be able to benefit even if they didn't/couldn't attend the session.

With that in mind, the tutorial page on the Wiki is here.

To summarize the summary :)

• Download Cincom Smalltalk non-commercial here
• Access the Smalltalk Daily screencasts in order
• Access the Smalltalk Daily screencasts by topic
• Subscribe to Smalltalk Daily in your news aggregator

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, tutorial, learning

Engadget reports on a fascinating hardware mashup: a way to dump your RSS feed out as morse code - using a telegraph machine :)

The 2007 WOOR event will be held in Berlin this summer, and they are calling for papers. Head on over here for information.

Cincom Smalltalk Partner Satellite Forces was honored by ComputerWorld for their work on the Atlantis system. Head on over and check it out.

On the one hand, there are outlets all over the terminal I'm leaving from here at JFK. On the other hand, none of them actually work - which makes the "pay as you go" WiFi" a whole lot less useful. Sigh...

Dare Obasanjo made a provocative point yesterday in a post titled "Open Source is Dead". His premise? That services like Twitter (and Flickr, and other "Web 2.0" things) create vendor lock-in differently - it's the community that matters most. So what if I have the source for a Twitter clone: can I create a community around my open alternative that somehow grabs people from Twitter? It's an interesting essay, and rather than try to summarize it, I'll recommend that you head on over there and read it.

Technorati Tags: social software, web2.0

This is late - I didn't do a log post last weekend. Before I left Heathrow, I downloaded all of the log data from the server though, so I'm able to pound my way through it at 30,000 feet :) Anyway - the BottomFeeder downloads went at a rate of 199/day - the details:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	515
Update	215
Mac X	141
Linux x86	110
Mac 8/9	72
CE ARM	68
Solaris	54
Windows98/ME	52
HPUX	46
AIX	30
Linux Sparc	27
Sources	23
SGI	14
Linux PPC	14
ADUX	7
CE x86	2

Add to the the 24-25 a day I'm getting from the CNet site, and it looks pretty good. On the HTML page access:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	47%
Internet Explorer	40.3%
MSN Bot	6%
Other	5.5%
Ocelli	2%
Opera	1.6%
MSRBOT	1.6%

Looks like my normal audience was back two weeks ago, both in terms of raw traffic and in terms of the distribution by tool. Finally, let's have a look at the syndication numbers:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Internet Explorer	29.8%
Mozilla	17.3%
BottomFeeder	14.1%
Other	3.5%
BlogLines	6.4%
Net News Wire	4.9%
Safari RSS	4.2%
Google Feed Fetcher	4.2%
Vienna	3.2%
NewsGator	1.8%
Akregator	1.6%
Python	1%
News Fire	1%
SharpReader	1%
RSS Bandit	1%
MSN Bot	1%
JetBrains	1%
Jakarta	1%
Opera	1%
Liferea	1%

Interestingly, the HTML page accesses are holding steady, but the syndication numbers are going up.

Filed under "whistling past the graveyard", David Hughes, a senior VP at the RIAA:

"The RIAA is well-aware that they are becoming irrelevant. They are also aware that nobody likes them, but they don't care about that. Someone also brought up the fact that the RIAA was recently voted as being the "worst company in America", to which David responded with some laughs and a quip about how they've been "beating Exxon-Mobil for years" in that arena."

But hey - we'll just keep suing people - that's got to provide positive PR.

Technorati Tags: RIAA, stupidity, music, PR, marketing

Daver Winer, on the latest revelations from the Kathy Sierra mess:

Next time -- think before you trash someone, no matter how much you dislike them, especially because you dislike them. It takes courage to stand up to a mob, but that is the best of what it means to be an American.

Small problem: The morons who set up meankids.com knew where that was going to go. Or worse, if they didn't know, they've been living in a cultural deprivation cave for their entire lives. If you're old enough to remember the early "social media" - BBS systems, USENET, and forums - then you darn well knew what was going to come out of a site that encouraged anonymous stuff.

Doesn't mean the people who set it up intended to see death threats tossed around, no. However - if they thought anything valuable was going to come out of such a venture after watching online behavior over the last two decades, then there's something deeply, deeply disconnected about them.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

This post from an anonymous MS insider hits a lot of good points on what's wrong (and right) with Microsoft - but more importantly, it makes points that many companies would do well to listen to. Take this, for instance - which is very much in line with things Laura Ries has written:

Stop fighting major wars on multiple fronts simultaneously. It is simply ridiculous for current management to assume that MSFT can fight the biggest and best companies on earth, across a dozen or more battlegrounds, and still hope to prevail. Just take a look at some of the folks MSFT is going up against: SONY (and Nintendo) in gaming, Nokia and many others in mobile, GOOG and YHOO in Search, Everyone from Alcatel to Siemens in IPTV, IBM/Oracle/SAP (and smaller players Salesforce.com. Rightnow, etc.) in ERP and CRM, IBM/Adobe/FOSS in middleware and development, AAPL and most of MSFT's former partners in mobile media, AAPL and GNU/Linux in Operating Systems, and FOSS in personal productivity. Worse, these battles are spreading MSFT too thin, and leaving its core cash cows increasingly vulnerable (would Vista have taken 5 years to develop if management hadn't been distracted with a dozen other battles?). MSFT needs to prioritize the current list down to something more realistic, while ensuring that the appropriate vigilance is maintained on the crown jewels. As a start, any new battle should require them to give up an existing one. Notice how that NEVER happens and they're always additive instead?

In the small, the new roadmap we just published takes that thinking into account: we (Cincom Smalltalk) simply cannot pretend that we can keep up with every development trend in the industry - while we aren't tiny, we certainly aren't as big as IBM, Sun, or Microsoft.

It's something that every company needs to keep in mind though: MS might dwarf a lot of outfits, but even they can be spread too thin and be fighting too many battles. If you're a product manager, as I am, that paragraph I quoted above provides a lot of food for thought.

Technorati Tags: PR

I suppose it's reassuring to know that the TSA is not the sole repository of stupid rules that have no impact on actual security (TM). This morning, I had to go through security here at Heathrow - so I get to the outer line, and they tell me that I can't have more than one bag (I have my laptop bag and a new bag I got as swag at SPA 2007). However - and here's the stupid part - it was fine so long as I turned one of the bags sideways and stuck it inside the other one (mind you, a good fourth of it was sticking out at that point).

So far as "the rules" go, I was no A-OK. Of course, I got down to the actual scanners, and had to separate everything for the machines - but that was fine, since the only ones concerned with the "one bag" rule were the gatekeepers. Once inside, you could take everything back apart and have as many bags as you liked.

The bizarre thing is that someone thinks this serves a purpose.

Technorati Tags: stupidity