[Newbies] Using Squeak to teach undergrads OOP

[Stephan Eggermont]

 > Some of the faculty panned it because they claimed
 >the I/O features were either poor or nonexistent.

That is a silly argument. Squeak or Pharo don't have
really high-performance I/O, but that can hardly be
an argument for an introduction to OOP course.

Both provide more than enough features, and better
ones than java, to do the kind of i/o typically done
in such a course.

Some better arguments against are:
- the user interface is not really consistent,
   and in the case of Pharo not yet stable;
- deep down there are monsters, classes
   that are way too large and not well refactored.
- creating native user interfaces is difficult.

I'm not sure the first argument is really
important, as every IDE is going to provide
conceptual difficulties for a  beginner anyway.

One could anticipate on the second argument,
use it for an assignment (describe three
responsibilities of the Morph class), and
talk a bit on refactoring.

And user interfaces could be web-based
in Seaside.

Stephan Eggermont