[Newbies] Misunderstanding Squeak

Edwin Castro edwin.gabriel.castro at lifetime.oregonstate.edu
Mon Apr 7 19:23:35 UTC 2008


On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Nathan Lane <nathamberlane at gmail.com>
wrote:

> So, as a beginner, I have noted the many things people have told me about
> Squeak, but one thing is really bugging me, and I can't break free of it. In
> my experience programming is a linear task, not object-based, so how do I
> program using Squeak which uses "active objects"?  I don't understand.
>
I've seen this happen a lot when I see new programmers. They'll write single
method programs that simply make library calls or implement (inline) all the
functionality they need. My brother took a "learn to program" course in
college (in C yuk!) and all his programming assignments looked like this. I
*tried* to teach him to look for patterns and to remove dupplication but he
never got the hang of it. Writing functions that could be reused was a
difficult thing for him to comprehend.

I find that a lot of new programmers learn to program in a procedural style
and then continue to apply that style with other languages they use even if
they should use a different style. I think that working through an example
to show how to think about objects would be very helpful for beginners. I
would recommend David West's book, Object
Thinking<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735619654/>,
but a lot of people didn't like the book. I really enjoyed the book but
perhaps there are better ways to teach how to think about objects...

--
Edwin
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