Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile
Richard Sargent

@rsargent5x5

Old dude who knows Smalltalk.
Developing software since 1973 and Smalltalk since 1991.

ID: 1515674724

calendar_today14-06-2013 07:57:28

2,2K Tweet

296 Followers

77 Following

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

"I want to be able to do Y" is a good starting point. Not how. Not details. Just I have this need. After that, collaborate to build the solution that really does the job.

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Hey Ninja Blender Recipe, the light on the front doesn't work like the label claims. Shows solid purple, ready to go, yea! Press the button, it shows solid red, needs to charge, boo. Then switches right back to solid purple, everything's good. Lies, I tell you. Lies!

Tudor Girba (@girba) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Somewhere along the way, our industry took a terribly wrong turn and we ended up with packaged apps as utilities instead of an empowering personal medium. This choice had such a devastating power that today people paid to program do not even conceive of building their own tools

Somewhere along the way, our industry took a terribly wrong turn and we ended up with packaged apps as utilities instead of an empowering personal medium. This choice had such a devastating power that today people paid to program do not even conceive of building their own tools
Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

In November of 1986, v1.0 of GemStone/S shipped. It was announced at that year's OOPSLA conference. 38 years later and it's still going strong.

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Hey, Amazon! "Something went wrong" is semantically equivalent to "it didn't work". Both are shitty explanations. What the **** is the problem??!

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

It's a good idea to record *what* was discussed/agreed, but even more important is to capture the *why*. Understanding why things are is essential for continuity & coherence and for guiding when we can change direction.

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

I don't agree with this, and I strongly suspect no Smalltalker does. Anyone who argues that one tool is all you need really doesn't understand tools. No one would say that about cutting implements or any other tool. Use all the tools whenever each is appropriate.

Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Businesses should use commodity / off the shelf software whenever they can. Otherwise, they are working on something other than the things important to their business. (But, if you have to modify it, you probably shouldn't.)

The Tragically Hip (@thehipofficial) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Help us support the Rugby Canada Women’s Rugby team in their run up to the 2025 World Cup! The team is the #2 team in the world yet have 1/10 the funding. We’ve created a limited edition t-shirt. Proceeds go directly to help close the $1M funding gap! thehip.com/products/tth-c…

Help us support the <a href="/RugbyCanada/">Rugby Canada</a> Women’s Rugby team in their run up to the 2025 World Cup! The team is the #2 team in the world yet have 1/10 the funding.

We’ve created a limited edition t-shirt. Proceeds go directly to help close the $1M funding gap!

thehip.com/products/tth-c…
Richard Sargent (@rsargent5x5) 's Twitter Profile Photo

Smalltalk programmers understand 100% of their language's syntax, because it has so little syntax. And they can easily find anything in their "standard library". So, they spend their mental energy on the problem not the tools.