[Seaside] OSCON report

[stephane ducasse]

normally 3.9 will be out next week
at least the gamma.

What would be nice is to identify what is missing between mine and  
your videos.

Stef


On 1 août 06, at 15:45, Wilkes Joiner wrote:

> On 7/30/06, stephane ducasse <stephane.ducasse at free.fr> wrote:
>> Hi wilkes
>>
>> I agree for Sails. ;)
>> May be we should join forces with all the videos I did and your to
>> create a decent web site (mine is really just a
>> folder) with videos showing how to develop in Smalltalk.
>
> Sounds good to me.  Just a reminder, I have a mini tutorial at
> http://wilkesjoiner.com/.  It needs to be updated and extended, and I
> need to redo the videos with sound.  I was planning on waiting until
> 3.9 came out before doing that.  I could do them in 3.8 and redo them
> in 3.9, though.  If you like it, we can use that as a starting point.
>
> Another thought I had was to take the gentle introduction you wrote
> that comes in 3.8 and enhancing it to make it more interactive.  I
> think both approaches are needed.  The tutorials and videos are more
> passive and can pique interest, but if done well, the interactive
> tutorial could really show off Squeak and go much further in helping a
> newbie along.
>
> - Wilkes
>
>> Stef
>>
>>
>> On 30 juil. 06, at 03:48, Wilkes Joiner wrote:
>>
>> > Thanks for the update Avi.  Good to hear.  I've been convinced  
>> for a
>> > long time that the more attention Ruby/Python get the better off
>> > Smalltalk is.  It will help to break the static branches of
>> > programming and will bring a larger mind share into the late- 
>> binding
>> > camping.
>> >
>> > I've got a screencast in the queue to address the issue of learning
>> > Smalltalk.  This is motived by Ralph Johnson's post
>> > (http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-May/
>> > 104071.htm).
>> > Smalltalk is so radically different that the conventional ways of
>> > learning a new programming language are not applicable.   
>> Tutorials and
>> > api documentation are the main ways of learning most envirionments.
>> > In Smalltalk, the trick is learning how to browse the image and
>> > experiment with running code using the workspace and the  
>> inspectors.
>> > I think this is more effective once you figure out how to do it.
>> >
>> > The thing that is killing me with Rails is not being able to  
>> read the
>> > code I'm relying on.  I can open a text on editor on the source  
>> once I
>> > find it, but this brutally primitive compared to what comes for  
>> free
>> > with Smalltalk.  Porting ActiveRecord to Smalltalk with its own
>> > browser would really leap frog what is available in Ruby.  Someone
>> > will write a good IDE for Ruby and Rails.  It's inevitable.   
>> However,
>> > given the heavy reliance on runtime code generation in both Ruby  
>> and
>> > Rails,  it seems to me to be a really challenging prospect.  Not  
>> only
>> > do you have to deal with dynamic typing.  The definition of a lot
>> > classes only exist at runtime.  In Smalltalk, we can do that,  
>> but it
>> > is done far less frequently than in Ruby. I would rather just port
>> > ActiveRecord.
>> >
>> > I'll get a screencast together tomorrow and post a link on this  
>> list
>> > and squeak-dev for feedback.
>> >
>> > - Wilkes
>> >
>> > BTW, I prefer Sails to StOR.
>> >
>> > On 7/29/06, Avi Bryant <avi.bryant at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Since this StOR thread seems to be about reaching an audience we
>> >> haven't had before, it's probably worth mentioning what I've  
>> been up
>> >> to for the last week.
>> >>
>> >> I've just returned from the O'Reilly's open source OSCON  
>> conference.
>> >> I gave a talk on Seaside very intentionally angled not towards
>> >> convincing people to jump ship from Python/Perl/Rails etc, but  
>> rather
>> >> towards getting them to consider some of the basic technologies -
>> >> like the the Canvas, Component, Callback and Continuation model  
>> (hm,
>> >> never noticed all those C's before) - for use in their  
>> environment of
>> >> choice.  However, interest was high enough that:
>> >>
>> >> - I gave a 45 minute talk to a packed room (some good photos at
>> >> http://flickr.com/photos/jacobian/)
>> >> - followed by about 30 minutes of Q&A with most people still in
>> >> the room
>> >> - followed by 3 hours of conversation with a large group at dinner
>> >> about Seaside and Smalltalk
>> >> - followed by a subset of that group tracking me down first  
>> thing the
>> >> next morning and making me spend another couple of hours doing a
>> >> Squeak demo
>> >>
>> >> What I found is that a) a huge number of these people have tried
>> >> Squeak before, and that b) they were all very excited by what they
>> >> saw in my (very simple) demo, but none of them had been able to  
>> make
>> >> the journey themselves from the one to the other - that is, it was
>> >> impossible for them to just download a Squeak image and, with no
>> >> prior Smalltalk experience, find their way through a Hello World
>> >> Seaside app.  So they decided Squeak wasn't for them.  There's  
>> also a
>> >> huge amount of confusion and disinformation about the state of  
>> things
>> >> like version control: essentially everyone seems to believe  
>> that the
>> >> image is the only way to distribute Smalltalk code, and is
>> >> understandably leery of this.
>> >>
>> >> I sensed enough goodwill, and got enough concrete offers to  
>> publish
>> >> articles/books/etc, to think that the opportunity is there to  
>> get a
>> >> mainstream audience for Seaside *if* (and this is a fairly  
>> large if)
>> >> we want it and have the resources to put into it.  What it would
>> >> take, I think, is a custom Squeak distribution and tutorial/
>> >> screencast that was aimed at a non-Smalltalk audience.  It  
>> would need
>> >> to cover:
>> >>
>> >> - The browser
>> >> - The workspace
>> >> - Saving, loading, and merging in Monticello
>> >> - The basics of Seaside (a revamped "Walk on the Seaside" tutorial
>> >> would be fine)
>> >>
>> >> An ActiveRecord-like simple O/R framework would certainly help  
>> too,
>> >> but I think the above is a higher priority.
>> >>
>> >> Incidentally, I was asked by a few people at the conference how  
>> big
>> >> the Seaside community was, and I was very pleased to be able to  
>> say
>> >> "well, I almost never post to the list anymore, because other  
>> people
>> >> are doing all the question answering, discussing, and committing".
>> >> That's pretty cool, and an important threshold to cross, I think.
>> >>
>> >> Avi
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>> >>
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>> >
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