[Edu-sig] Python & Smalltalk (was Re: OLPC related: pyGTK)

[Arthur]

Paul D. Fernhout wrote:

>ajsiegel at optonline.net wrote:
>  
>
>>Squeaks pretense issues, and its licensing issues, are - by the way -  not unrelated
>>when you look at it.
>>    
>>
>
>Sometimes I think something like that myself. :-)
>
>But, to elaborate on your point a little more (in a toned down way :-):
>  
>
It is hard to know how to respond.

I don't know how to tone down on this particular issue any more than I 
have.  If you want to call it an obsession, OK.  You can search the 
archives of edu-sig and find me obsessively attacking Kay and not Squeak 
itself, but Kay's positioning of Squeak,  from the earliest days here, 
and suffering attacks here for doing so as:

a) being presumptuous.
b) being irrelevant.

Let's leave it that I fully accept the standard history, the importance 
of Smalltalk, the role of Kay during the period of history which you 
recount.

And the fact that he is un-shy about recounting it, and having others 
recount it on his behalf, provides him with certain powers, but with 
certain responsibilities.

I am not a fan of how he has handled that power and those responsibilities.

But that if I have not yet successfully communicated why I firmly 
believe his later efforts, his later approach and most particularly his 
later "rap" is more destructive than productive, I guess that I have to 
resign myself to the fact that I never will.

I assure you, I am making perfect sense to myself - however.

Art