[Cuis-dev] ODBC error

Mon Oct 21 10:58:27 PDT 2024

Hi Mark,

That is very much appreciated. I hope your book will be very useful for 
other people new to Cuis and Smalltalk!

As you prepare material for your book, please keep in mind 
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Documentation/AboutCuis.md#the-philosophy-behind-cuis 
and http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html . 
These explain the ideas behind Smalltalk, and knowing about them from 
the start will be a great help when trying to understand any part of the 
system. They also explain why it is much better to learn the tools to 
explore the system that it is to ask someone questions. Asking questions 
is of course OK, but if you succeed in finding the answer before asking, 
your benefit is much bigger.

Cheers,

On 10/20/2024 8:34 PM, Mark Volkmann via Cuis-dev wrote:
> I apologize if the way I worded my question came across as rude. That 
> was certainly not my intent. I think I should explain why I've tried 
> to be a part of the Cuis Smalltalk community for the past eight months 
> or so.
>
> I'm pretty new to Smalltalk and it turns out I love it. And so far 
> Cuis Smalltalk is my favorite distribution.
>
> Early in my learning I had a lot of beginner questions for which I 
> failed to easily find answers. So I frequently asked questions on this 
> mailing list. Over time I learned that doing that is frowned on and 
> there is a high expectation that beginners will read through the 
> source code and try hard to find answers on their own. I've tried hard 
> to do that, but haven't always been successful.
>
> I decided that I wanted to help future beginners find the answers to 
> all the questions I had more easily. So I started documenting 
> everything I learned about Smalltalk at 
> https://mvolkmann.github.io/blog/ (select Smalltalk in the left nav to 
> see a long list of subtopics). As you can see, I have spent a large 
> amount of time on this. It's nothing compared to those of you that 
> have been contributing to Cuis Smalltalk for years, but I think it 
> provides a good resource for anyone new to Smalltalk in general and 
> Cuis Smalltalk in particular.
>
> I do not have a particular app in mind that I want to build with 
> Smalltalk. Instead I'm constantly thinking about how I would convince 
> non-Smalltalk developers to give Cuis Smalltalk a try. A perfect 
> example of that is my investigation into database access. Many of the 
> developers I know are web developers. Accessing relational databases 
> is a fundamental part of implementing most web applications. So I need 
> to be able to demonstrate how that is done from Cuis Smalltalk to have 
> any hope of convincing my web developer friends to try it. As far as I 
> know, based on many searches, there is not currently a web page that 
> shows step-by-step how to access a relational database using Cuis 
> Smalltalk. I want to provide that if I can learn how to do it.
>
> While some in the community may have been annoyed by the number of 
> questions I have asked, I do hope there is a feeling that my presence 
> in the Cuis community has had a net positive impact. In addition to 
> the documentation I've created in my blog I have identified a number 
> of minor issues that have been fixed, contributed a small change set 
> that added the ability to set a background image in cover and tile 
> modes, and most recently contributed a library for implementing web 
> servers that has many advantages over the WebClient library 
> (https://github.com/mvolkmann/Cuis-Smalltalk-WebClientPlus).
>
> I really want to contribute via the documentation I'm creating and 
> hope that at some point all of that content can be the basis for a 
> book focused on Cuis Smalltalk.
>
> P.S. I honestly didn't know that the 
> Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/Documentation/Technical directory existed. Thanks 
> for pointing that out. I'll read that now.
>
> On Sun, Oct 20, 2024 at 5:48 PM Juan Vuletich <juan at cuis.st 
> <mailto:juan at cuis.st>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Mark,
>
>     What follows may be an intricate reading involving language,
>     manners, and how the Open Source world works. Please read carefully.
>
>     On 10/20/2024 7:31 AM, Mark Volkmann via Cuis-dev wrote:
>>     I should have asked “Is it possible that nobody that uses Cuis
>>     Smalltalk in macOS accesses relational databases?”
>
>     Who knows? Cuis Smalltalk is MIT license you get the whole system,
>     free for any use, without any obligations. That means that you are
>     not required to disclose what you do with it. As a consequence of
>     that, the answer to "it is possible that nobody that uses Cuis
>     Smalltalk does XXX?" is true, for any XXX. Does this matter? I
>     don't think so.
>
>     A much better way to react would be something like "Hi Folks. I'm
>     trying to do XXX. I know the system is fully open and explicitly
>     designed to make it easy for me to solve my technical problems,
>     but I'm still unable to do so. Has anybody faced these kinds of
>     problems I'm seeing before, and is willing to help me?".
>
>     That will indeed work much better.
>
>     Additionally, some comment from you revealing that you have
>     already read the contents of the /Documentation/Technical folder
>     would be appreciated. Your first message made me believe you
>     hadn't realized you had trouble calling an API via FFI. But Jon's
>     answer doesn't tell you that, and assumes you already know that.
>     Your following message makes me now believe that you know that the
>     problem may be "how to reference a lib path in the Open Smalltalk
>     VM", indeed being aware that this is a problem with FFI.
>
>     Once you realize that, you may also realize that this problem has
>     almost nothing to do with Cuis Smalltalk. A bit of googling shows
>     people asking similar (but better formed) questions in nginx and lua.
>
>     I'm starting to have doubts about your intellectual honesty while
>     asking these questions. I think the Cuis community deserves better
>     than this.
>
>
>     Thanks,
>
>>
>>     ---
>>     R. Mark Volkmann
>>     Object Computing, Inc.
>>
>>>     On Oct 20, 2024, at 6:26 AM, Mark Volkmann
>>>     <r.mark.volkmann at gmail.com> <mailto:r.mark.volkmann at gmail.com>
>>>     wrote:
>>>
>>>      Yikes! Sounds complicated. Can you point me to any
>>>     documentation that describes how I could reference a lib path in
>>>     the Open Smalltalk VM?
>>>
>>>     Is it possible that nobody that uses Cuis Smalltalk accesses
>>>     relational databases?
>
> -- 
> R. Mark Volkmann
> Object Computing, Inc.

-- 
Juan Vuletich
cuis.st
github.com/jvuletich
researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich
linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
twitter.com/JuanVuletich

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