当前的 Smalltalk 开发活动
我的 Smalltalk 学习之旅已经开始几个月了。 我从一开始就知道 Smalltalk 有几种“方言”（也许“方言”不是最好的词），但我指的是 VisualWorks、Squeak 和 Dolphin，仅举其中三种。 到目前为止，我的尝试仅限于 Visualworks 和 Squeak。 但我现在发现 Squeak 似乎正在变形（双关语！）成其他几个变体，例如 Tweak、Pharo、Cobalt 和 Croquet。
有人可以解释一下吗： a) 为什么会出现这些举措（Tweak、Pharo、Croquet 和 Cobalt）？ b) 我应该花时间跟上 - 记住我是 Smalltalk 新手吗？ c) 为什么这样一种不受欢迎的语言会发生如此充满活力的发展？ d) 还有其他我应该注意的举措吗？ （作为初学者而不是计算机研究员）
I'm now a couple of months into my Smalltalk learning voyage. I was aware, from the beginning that Smalltalk has several "dialects" (perhaps "dialect" isn't the best word) but by this I mean VisualWorks, Squeak and Dolphin to mention just three. So far I have limited my foray to Visualworks and Squeak. But I've now discovered that Squeak seems to be metamorphosing (pun intended!) into several other variants e.g. Tweak, Pharo, Cobalt and Croquet.
Could somebody explain:
a) why these initiatives (Tweak, Pharo, Croquet and Cobalt) have arisen ?
b) should I take time keep abreast - bearing in mind I'm a Smalltalk neophyte?
c) How come such an unpopular language has such a vibrant set of developments happening?
d) Are there other initiatives that I should be aware of? (as a beginner not a computer researcher that is)
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至于“为什么这样一种不受欢迎的语言会发生如此充满活力的发展？”，我不得不说“受欢迎程度”与实用性或生产力无关。 逆向投资者会告诉您，大多数人总是都是错误的。
当您被 Smalltalk 错误咬伤时，您往往会继续被咬。 有许多以前的 Smalltalk 使用者现在用其他语言谋生，但他们怀念这门语言，因此会抓住机会再次在 Smalltalk 中谋生。
这种现象是社区充满活力的原因。
就我个人而言，我发现我在 Smalltalk 中工作效率最高。 工具和语言共同作用，使想法和执行之间的差距变得非常小。 在 Smalltalk 中，当我面临使用新库时，我可以使用调试器“降落”到操作的中间 - 在单个工具中查看状态和代码。 您无法通过阅读代码和研究日志文件来复制这种体验...
Smalltalk 有其怪癖，而这些怪癖确实使 Smalltalk 脱离了主流。 但一些怪癖使得 Smalltalk 成为一个高效的工作环境，这可能意味着它永远不会成为主流。
但是，有了支持 Smalltalk（以多种方言）的充满活力和活跃的社区，Smalltalk 是否主流还重要吗？
As far as 'How come such an unpopular language has such a vibrant set of developments happening?', I have to say that 'popularity' does not correlate with utility or productivity. A contrarian will tell you that the majority is always wrong.
When you get bitten by the Smalltalk bug, you tend to stay bitten. There are many former Smalltalkers who are earning their living working in other languages that miss the language and would jump at the opportunity to earn their living in Smalltalk again.
This phenomenon accounts for the vibrant community.
Personally, I find that I am at my most productive working in Smalltalk. The tools and the language work together to make the gap between idea and execution very small. In Smalltalk when I am faced with using an new library, I can use the debugger to 'parachute' into the middle of the action - viewing state and code in a single tool. You can't duplicate that experience by reading code and studying log files...
Smalltalk has its quirks and the quirks do keep Smalltalk out of the mainstream. But some of the quirks are what make Smalltalk a productive environment to work in, which may mean that it will never be mainstream.
But with a vibrant and active community supporting Smalltalk (in a variety of dialects) does it matter whether Smalltalk is mainstream or not?
一些背景知识可能会有所帮助：Tweak 是一项研究工作，试图将 Etoys 的一些伟大的东西带到系统级别（即玩家服装架构、并发模型、“事件无处不在”、异步通知等）。 Tweak 是一种图形、合成和脚本的“蓝面”方法，在某些方面从未真正打算成为一种生产工具。 它成为其中之一是它的衰落，因为它没有足够完善以供广泛使用，并且通过成为一种生产工具，它变得不可能实施一些根本性的改变，而这些改变是为其统治世界做好准备所需要的;-)
槌球一个完全不同的目标。 我们需要 Croquet，因为我们需要一个完全相同的复制计算机器。 Croquet 在所有平台上进行位相同的计算，这需要修改虚拟机和一些库（例如浮点）。 Cobalt 是 Croquet 的衍生品，它采用 SDK 并从中构建应用程序。 从这个意义上说，Cobalt 并不是真正的叉子——它是 Croquet 社区当前的焦点。
A bit of background might be helpful: Tweak was a research effort trying to bring some of the great things from Etoys to the system level (i.e., the player-costume architecture, the concurrency model, "events everywhere", asynchronous notifications etc). Tweak was a "blue-plane" approach to graphics, composition and scripting and in some ways never really intended to be a production tool. That it became one was its downfall because it wasn't polished enough for wide use and by becoming a production tool it became infeasible to implement some of the radical changes that would have been required to make it ready for world dominance ;-)
Croquet had an entirely different goal. We needed Croquet because we needed a bit-identical replicated computation machinery. Croquet computes bit-identically on all platforms which required modifications to the virtual machine and some libraries (such as floating point). Cobalt is a spin-off from Croquet which takes the SDK and builds an application from it. In this sense Cobalt is not really a fork - it is the current focus of the Croquet community.
我不知道你提到的其他举措，但 Pharo 是一个旨在生成版本的分叉Squeak 没有所有的繁琐（例如 EToys），更好的开发人员支持和使用现代（??）技术，如 TrueType 字体。 非常值得下载当前图像并查看 - 我发现它在我的古老硬件上有点慢，但我打算密切关注它。
I don't know about the other initiatives you mention, but Pharo is a fork which aims at producing a version of Squeak without all the cruft (like EToys, for example), better developer support and use of modern (??) technologies like TrueType fonts. It's well worth downloading the current image and having a look - I find it a bit slow on my ancient hardwate, but I intend to keep an eye on it.
这恰恰表明了 Smalltalk 是一种多么鼓舞人心的语言，以及它的根源是多么健全和设计巧妙。 它激励从学术界到工业界的人们尝试扩展和建立新的“方言”，然后这些方言通常会在一定程度上相互融合，以便最终我们都能获利。
这就是为什么我喜欢 Smalltalk 及其社区，即使有时你会感到那里很紧张。 但每一次进步都首先需要紧张。
例如，Pharo 就是这种紧张的结果。 Pharo 是 Squeak 的一个分支，由一群具有强大领导力和多工作/少说话心态的 Squeaker 组成，这已经显示出结果，如果不是所有 Smalltalk 的话，它肯定会推动 Squeak 更进一步。
This just shows how an inspiring language Smalltalk is and how sound and cleverly designed roots it has. It inspires people from academia to industry to try to extend and build new "dialects", which are then usually merged to some extend among themselves so that at the end we all profit.
That's why I like Smalltalk and its community/communities, even that sometimes you feel tensions there. But every progress needs a tension first.
Pharo is a result of such tension for instance. Pharo is a fork of Squeak, by group of Squeakers with a strong leadership and work more/talk less mentality, which already show the results and it will for sure move Squeak if not all Smalltalk a step further.
我认为有这样的举措或分叉，因为社区能够做到这一点:)这个小型的小型社区充满了知道自己在做什么的聪明人。 关于虚拟机、语言设计等方面的知识已经足够了。
另一方面，它也像其他所有社区一样。 有不同意见的人。 因此，少数人开始“稍微不同的事情”来检查/实现他们的想法只是时间问题。 他们这样做是因为他们可以。
I think there are that initiatives or forks because the community is able to do it :) This small smalltalk community is stuffed up with smart guys that know what they do. There is enough knowledge about virtual machines, language design and such.
On the other hand it is like every other community, too. There are people with different opinions. So it is only a matter of time until a few people start "something slightly different" to check/realize their ideas. And they do because they can.