[self-interest] The Effort on Self

[Gordon Cichon]

Hi all,

I would like to suggest that we should get a more precisely
defined focus on what our effort with Self is heading to.

I would like to publicly ask the following question:

What is our vision on Self?

And:

Can we do it together?


Smalltalk started off with very similar goals than Self.
It had the reputation of a very powerful but authistic
platform. In Smalltalk, very litte have been done over the
time to relieve this major disadvantage, while its advantages
have been constantly adpoted into other systems like Java,
C++ or Visual Basic. The result is that as the good ideas
of Smalltalk got absorbed, and it did hardly evolve any further
since 1980, it became virtually obsolete, IMHO.

So, let's learn something from the past, and let's not make
the same mistakes with Self again.

We have to work more closely together. Let's not reinvent the
wheel over and over again. We have currently nearly ten
different implementation projects on Self, some of them
are already running for more than five years, and we still
do not have any tangible result besides the work of the Self
group at Sunlabs.

Let's get more focus, folks. Of course, everybody of us has a
strong ego and wants to be the first one who rolls out the
ultimate Self solution. What do we gain from that? If we are
so good that we dare to implement Self on our own, would we
not be much more successful if we join and work together?

Gordon.