On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 7:11 AM, Herbert König <<a href="mailto:herbertkoenig@gmx.net">herbertkoenig@gmx.net</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br>Hello everyone; this is just getting too interesting. It is like the classical Zen path to Enlightnment:<br>
<br>"How long will it take me?"<br><br>"10 years."<br><br>"No, I mean if I really try?"<br><br>"20 years."<br><br>"No, you don't understand...I'll try REALLY hard..."<br>
<br>"30 years."<br><br>I am in nearly the same place David is, except that I have asked all these questions myself already, and have gotten the same responses! I am SLOWLY learning Smalltalk, so I have seen others pick it up much faster through the same process. Anyway, I found a framework that made sense to ME (Aida) and started building SOMETHING. Then Squeak started to make more sense. It's a process, I think, NOT a recipe, and we are all wired differently.<br>
<br>Anyway, that would be my suggestion. Look at all the books, yes. Listen to what people are telling you...yes. But in your heart you KNOW that the ONLY way any of it is going to make sense is by USING it. It took me almost FOUR years before I could do that, but now I am doing "useful" work. Very, very, occasionally I can figure out out something within a "framework" by "reading it," as has been suggested to you. Mostly I am still just using the frameworks, much like you would in a traditional language. And, like any language, start from one example, get stuck, and if you can't read the code in a browser, the most amazing thing about Squeak is NOT the implementation, but the PEOPLE. If you can type fast, you'll get fast help!<br>
<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Hello David,<br>
<br>
DF> Squeak is a toy for academics and hobbyists to try out new ideas and<br>
DF> explore computing at a higher-level. It wasn't designed for doing<br>
DF> conventional application development and you won't find much support<br>
DF> in Squeak for normal commercial programming. In fact, just the<br>
<br>
Squeak is used in several commercial web apps, one example being gas<br>
billing by Janko.</blockquote><div><br>Janko, by they way, is a shear force of nature. If you use Aida and need help, he is contagious. I would be willing to show you around Aida due largely to all the help Janko has given me!<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Then there are commercial apps in Squek which have nothing to do with<br>
seaside or aida. Look at Squeak people for Tansel Ersavas' he has done<br>
several Squeak apps.<br>
<br>
I myself query databases with Squeak, partly using a neural network.<br>
Then I generate csv and management always has people at hand to make<br>
their reports in Excel and Word.</blockquote><div><br>Have you written any "tools" for this? I have been doing some of this for very challenging information, but like the "easy documentation" and fast change ability of a visual query designer and the browsing ability of something like DbVisualizer. I have been fantasizing about a Squeak based database exploration tool that could design queries and "drop down" into Smalltalk collections for the really hard work.<br>
<br>A likely boring example follows:<br><br>Take, for example, our hospital chart times. Each time something is charted, we get a time stamp. We have studied the accuracy of these (particularly when they are back-dated) and found them to be tolerably accurate. What we NEED, though, is the arrival and discharge time PER UNIT. For example, a patient could flow like this:<br>
<br>Arrive ER<br>Leave ER<br>Arrive ICU<br>Leave ICU<br>Arrive PCU<br>Leave PCU<br>Arrive 3C<br>Leave 3C<br>Arrive ICU<br>Leave ICU<br><br><br>Where ER, ICU, PCU, 3C are just different units. It is quite common for patients to move back and forth among units depending on their condition.<br>
<br>Now, the EASY think for us would be if an arrival and discharge time was documented! This is a whole other topic about the documentation demands on nursing staff! So, for now, just assume we want to solve the problem given the above information. The problem you run into with any type of query grouping is that you run into the situation where you get the first FIRST ICU time and the last LAST ICU time in the example above, not the first and last time for each instance of an an ICU visit. So, code works great for stuff like that, but it would be nice to handle the initial pull of chart times for a date range in a simple query designer! Especially since I am leaving out the joins necessary to get patient account numbers, etc...!<br>
<br><br>Just wondering if someone has already done what I am thinking about!<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">You have a very valid point regarding office like user interfaces.<br>
If that's required for your definition of 'conventional application<br>
development' you're absolutely right.</blockquote><div><br>Although, I have always pictured WxSqueak as a possible alternative for "conventional development," and have learned enough Smalltalk to go back to it and check it out again. It looks like a viable alternative to me to use my existing Domain Model objects from, say, an Aida application, and provide a native Windows view...<br>
<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
DF> For enterprise application development using Smalltalk, you are<br>
DF> probably better off with a commercial Smalltalk.<br>
<br>
Ask Qwaq or dabbledb about that.</blockquote><div><br>Yes, but I think they have skills I do not! They can build the TOOLS I am using!<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
The other reasons against Squeak are in acceptance by management</blockquote><div><br>I am lucky enough to work somewhere that I can use what gets the job done, and we are struggling financially, so "free" is good if the ROI does not suffer due to "lost productivity" using "lesser" tools. I'm NOT saying Squeak is "lesser," I'm saying we considered wether it was first (less stable, etc...). What I found was that the open source support system surrounding Squeak is superior to anything out there! You guys are just incredibly knowledgeable and very, very, willing to help!<br>
</div></div><br>Rob