lack of contributors

[Mark Haniford]

A bit of background:  I used to program a lot of C++ - from '97 to
2004 it's about all I did in a professional capacity.  Maybe
familiarity breeds contempt, maybe it was the lack of my colleagues
training  them coming from assembly language, or maybe it was our
inability to use templates because of our compiler - but I learned to
loathe it as a language other than just me writing code that I would
maintain myself.

In any case, I consider it a bad collaboration language.  It's just
too quirky for mere mortals and those that don't just get it.   Most
people (me included) don't just get C++ completely.  In the hands of
wizards (KDE/QT) guys it is a powerful tool.

In any case, around late 2004 I started looking for a more productive
tool - mostly personally.  I always pretty much hated Java - starting
off with a lack of unsigneds that caused me frustration with parsing
out a binary file that we needed.  Plus, to me, Java was just a dumbed
down C++.  Bytecode platform portability is just topping and not core.

Anyway, I went through a feeding frenzy of many languages, Lisp,
Dylan, Python, Ruby, etc...and eventually took a second look at
Smalltalk

About Smalltalk:  Like many algol-inspired programmers, I found the
syntax to be quirky, but as Smalltalkers know, it has a drop-dead
simple syntax.  Not only that, but keyword selectors make it very
readable.  Notwithstanding (i < 42 ifTrue: []).  That is not readable,
it's just consistent.  If ( blah) is how we read, but that's somewhat
offtopic for this rant.

But I could deal with Smalltalk syntax because it gave me an imaged
based "live" environment - especially in Squeak.  That was the key for
me.  Squeak is a "desktop" but in a kindof "fuck the rest of OS, we'll
just do our own thing" kind of way.

Squeak is braindead in many ways.  It's completely fugly and totally
childlike in it's out of the box appearance.  Not only that, but with
it's philosophy of "BitBlt" is all we need", I knew that it's a lost
cause.  Maybe Croquet will take it to the next level, but I've always
despised "let's forget about the native OS" philosophy - especially
with the major platforms now starting to utilize the power of the
GPUs.

A word about coding:  One of the reasons I became attracted to
Smalltalk environment is because it de-emphasized the textual file
nature of code.  I consider file-based, text-based programming
completely flawed and antiquated.  It's not that I don't consider
text-programming flawed, but the file-based, dumb-ass text editor of
today's programming as flawed.  I'll point to intentional programming
(intentsoft.com) or what an MIT guy (subtextual.org) as the future. 
Smalltalk has always been in a bit in that flavor.  Understanding
foreign (something you haven't written) code has always been something
I've seen as a major flaw of how we program.  In other words, we don't
have tools to understand code at various contextual levels.  We're
still in the dark ages of programming.

I don't have the answers.  I don't have the brain to have the answers,
but PMD does seem to be (at an intuitive level) to be part of the
answer of managing the complexity of programming in our puny human
brains - or maybe I'm just stupid.

Oh, and as far as Brian's attitude.  I went through a lot of the
mailing lists archives to understand the history of Slate and found
Brian to have a fairly professional, congenial attitude.  I think it's
just IRC that he might have a problem with.  That's fine, he recently
stated he doesn't dig IRC.

In any case, PMD is what is important, not syntax.  If the syntax
sucks then we can parse out the slate code into something else.

I have no stake in. Brian does and I can understand his passion.  I'm
somewhat passionate about a better way to do things too, but maybe
Waldemer has some decent suggestions.

Brian, don't rip on him.  At least he cares enough to post.

Anyway, I'm rambling and I don't care.  PMD is out there (is Mica
alive) and it'll come about in some form.

I'm tired and refuse to review this ill-ranted post.  Take it for what it is.

Maybe "PMD" should be forked