[Newbies] Totally dumbfounded!!

[Michael van der Gulik]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:04:52 +0800
Stephen Ng <stephen.ng at planetnutek.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> First off, I am really new to smalltalk. I have tons of experience  
> with languages like C but have never made the move to OO type languages.
> 
> Secondly, I've been reading up as much as I can on OO concepts and  
> perhaps I can say that I feel comfortable with smalltalk syntax. My  
> question is how does one start learning about the MVC or Morphic  
> interfaces in order to use smalltalk in writing programs that make use  
> of lots of windows with text fields etc like in traditional business  
> systems? I cannot seem to find complete info on these topics. Many  
> tutorials just spend lots of time painting pretty lines and patterns  
> and fall short of showing someone like me how best to use the MVC,  
> Graphics-* or Morphic-* class categories and their classes. I  
> understand Morphic is the new wave as far as Squeak is concerned and I  
> would be just as happy to use it. However, all the literature on the  
> web is really disparate and does not approach the subject in a  
> holistic way. I've even tried looking at the classes themselves in the  
> Browser but the whole thing just gets very confusing.
> 
> I'd appreciate it if anyone can provide some pointers, direction,  
> literature (up to date with Squeak) etc.


Hi Stephen.

Welcome to the community! 

For traditional business programs in Squeak, I think that Morphic is the hard way to do it. I tried, made a bit of progress but then gave up in disgust.

What I recommend is that you start from our documentation page - http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/. The book to read is "Squeak By Example".

For business information system development, I'd recommend getting in to web development using Seaside: http://www.seaside.st/. Your applications in this environment will look a lot more professional than they would in Morphic.

And do ask questions here, or join us on the IRC channel on freenode.net, #squeak. Often there are people there :-).

Gulik.

-- 
Michael van der Gulik <mikevdg at gmail.com>