Jun 10th, 2002.	Camp Smalltalk (June 10-14, 2002) @ Glen Eyrie

Camp Smalltalk CS4
By John M McIntosh

It's Camp Smalltalk 4 (CS4). A holiday for me, a bit of work, a time for reflection, great fun, I will point out that I am looking for work, thus I did have free time to attend camp versus say working on a paying consulting contract.

{Your scribe notes he has a cold, and altitude sickness has prevented him from a timely posting of this report, I'll expect Campers to jump in and add links below and make corrections since cold medicine has made me a bit groggy}

Claus points out that he would like to host Camp Smalltalk 5 in Germany. See
[Proposal for Camp Smalltalk 5->http://www.exept.de/camp_smalltalk/camp_smalltalk.html]

Sunday June 9th 2002

After spending the night with a good friend who lives in Golden we both arrived at camp [http://home.navigators.org/us/gleneyrie] after passing through this huge smoke cloud from a raging fire which I'm sure most of you have been reading about in the news (Hayward fire). At the camp's front door we found Sames and Travis Griggs basking in the sun and trading comments about the Smalltalk industry. We register and went exploring, it's a great venue, next year tho could we have it a bit later in June, quite a few camper brought spouses and children, and quite a few more would have too if not for the fact school still is in.

Ralph later told us he had collected information on locations in Denver, then someone mentioned Colorado Springs. This place was mentioned and earlier in the year Ralph traveled to Denver on personal business and a quick side trip showed him this was going to be a great place to host a conference. Find [some pictures here->CS4Pictures]

Sunday
We started camp with 24 people in attendance. Ralph attempts to outline the projects, who is leading them, and comments about things we need to do.

Projects
Glorp (Alan)
ANSI test specs (Ralph)
Numerical Methods to other dialects (Roger)
Swazoo (Gerry Bell etc)
Embedded version of Pocket Smalltalk (Griggs)

Ralph:
There is a fair number of people still missing, 45 or so people sent money to register, very few of them canceled, so we expect quite a few more people to arrive.

Griggs went on to explain some things about his vision for an embedded Smalltalk in the control process area.

Squeak?
What about store for Squeak.
Lots of discussion.
Want a common model for storing source code. store is good place?
The GLORP piece helps eliminate the database api work.

Sames pointed out we need to careful we are not choosing a Camp Smalltalk project, we are choosing a model for the community. This is a very difficult thing, beware of wanting to do this.

Counter point, community hasn't picked a leader. We aren't proposing a model for the community.

Ralph:
Well so since we have only 2/3 of the people. It's too early to say who is going to be on which team. It's too early to decide what to do, so for the people who don't know what they want to do what would you like to know more?

Question GLORP?
Model? Platform porting?
It's more feature set now, versus implementation on different platforms.


ANSI test suite current status.
Richard Harmon refactored the code, Ralph has worked to bring the Camp Smalltalk stuff into that new version. He has a bunch of cards with features and work tasks that need to be completed. A lot of tests fail, also if you read the test then read the code you'll realize the implementation isn't quite right.

Like for example a copy of an object is the "same" as the copy. Ah, but about 30 classes fail this, so they were coded as an exception. Mmmm "same" is well mostly the "same". Also for example the test for floating point isn't sufficient once you understand the issues with floating point numbers and computer related precision and implementation issues.

Also the test suite isn't machine independent, and requires a howto to port to other Smalltalk implementations, this should be fixed.

Donald.
?? Typed Smalltalk?
Ralph: That might not make a good Camp Smalltalk project, because it requires a lot of thought. However some people are here who have thought about it a lot, so maybe they could work on it.

Ralph
Questions about other projects?

Swazoo?
Joseph:
We put out a clean code set just before camp so that people can work on it. We need to port it to other platforms. We really need a Squeak version. It's in Dolphin now. I worked on it three years ago, but haven't committed time lately.

SSL? yes we have that for Sawazoo.


Numerical Methods?
VW3 is ok, 5i.x is mostly done, Squeak is mostly done.

ANSI
Ralph:
Committee driven, lots of compromises. So after porting, is there different lessons that we can learn to build an extended standard? Like for example we are missing socket definitions, and we have a file definition that no-one implements.

Other things we need to talk about.

Hikes? When should do this?
It's hot outside so doing this at 2:00pm is the wrong time.

Tour of the castle?
Yes but we need to set the time! You aren't allowed access, you will find the staff will prevent you from walking around in the castle. Later we setup a time to see the castle via a official tour.

Is there a pool?

Yes the stream above the waterfall.

Meal times?

Breakfast is 7:30 to 8:30
Lunch is 12:00 13:00
Dinner is 18:00 to 19:00

How much is the fee for all this asked a latecomer?

Ralph had to do a deposit of thousands for the conference which he hopes to get back, so don't break windows. That gave us most of the use of this building, 4 or 5 rooms belong to someone else. We'll use the big room and the little room upstairs for discussion. {In actual fact your scribe didn't see anyone use the upstairs room}

Question Tables and infrastructure?
Yes we can get more tables, chairs. We are working on the power bar issue.
{Ralph later ensured pop, juice, candy, and coffee was in supply}

Connectivity? Wireless?

High speed internet access is over the castle?
Ok, how can we get it across the valley.
Lots of discussion.

{Your scribe was somewhat amazed that someone didn't run some Pringle cans for an 802.11b link to the castle}

Tomorrow, could we have a hike?

5:00 am is sunrise. So if we head out at 5:00am then this is best time to hike, and see the sunrise. If you've signed the release, the conference center doesn't care about liability issues therefore you can do hiking, climbing etc. However there is no climbing equipment allowed, keep it reasonable.

5:00am???? We took a vote to see if this should happen Monday or Tuesday.

Ok, quite a few people voted to do it Monday.

Castle tour, Wed after lunch!

Ralph:
We can talk more about what the projects are now, but maybe we should wait til tomorrow?

Sames.
Birds of a Feather on Pollack, Monday night?
Why well it could be cross platform!
How long?
Depends on how much people want to play.


Ok, people who want to work setup can start on that. People who want to talk to old friends they can do that. {Your scribe notes that network setup never happened, but lots of talking occurred}

Evening was spent discussing things with old friends and finding out what was up.

CampSmalltalk4.html Well for one TopLink has been sold to Oracle.

Web programming is that big or not? Well one Camper said he was doing a commanche application in squeak for his local grocery store. That didn't pay much but the merchant did need a web application and it was an opportunity to work in Smalltalk. After discovering that most large scale Smalltalk projects aren't hiring people you need to look around and see what your local community merchants are doing in the e-commerce area. You'd be surprised that they are wanting to do something, qnd it seems they are being ignored, thus there is opportunity to do this type of work. Doesn't pay too much, but it's Smalltalk.

Ralph by this time had dug out his iBook and setup a projector to talk to a group of six about the ANSI test units. Other groups had about the same size. For readers information we've setup an area similar to Camp Smalltalk 2 where we have multiple tables and chair setup for pair programming in the one large room we've been given.

5:00am you've got to be kidding, but my room mate is going to get up.

Ha, at 5:10am my room mate realizes the alarm clock he fiddled with last night was set incorrectly, frantic effort on his part fails to find the people doing the hike, so he retires back to bed.

Onwards to [CS4 Monday->Camp Smalltalk CS4 Monday]