[Seaside] Getting Started with Squeak?

goran at krampe.se goran at krampe.se
Fri Sep 1 17:36:26 UTC 2006


Hi!

Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Iâ—Žve got a general question. I wasnâ—Žt sure where to post it in the
> Squeak lists. Since I already subscribe to this list, and I know all of
> you are very nice, I hope you wonâ—Žt mind.

"Squeak-dev" is a very nice list too. :) And there is also a "Beginners"
list these days:

	http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo

I would personally like newbies to use Squeak-dev - we all benefit from
that and historically Squeak-dev has always been a mixture of experts
and fresh beginners. But otherwise the new beginner list might be
helpful - but I am not sure how many "experts" track it. I don't, at
least not yet.
 
> Iâ—Žm coming to Squeak from C/C++/Java/.NET with years and years of on
> the job experience. I started by looking at Dolphin Smalltalk and
> learned a lot by reading and going through their introductory document
> at http://www.object-arts.com/docs/index.html. Does Squeak have
> something like this?

Well, you always have this starting point:
	http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/

It should at least point you to some of the most important sources (the
Swiki, Stef's free books site already mentioned in this thread etc).

> I saw Avi Bryant breezing through the Squeak UI in his talk at OSCON
> â—Ž06, and it all seemed quite nice. Now it is sort of disheartening as

The Squeak UI may look "odd" but it really is pretty nice as a dev env.
Pretty stable, pretty easy to write your own tools or modify those that
are there etc. Sure, Morphic is a bit messy etc, but it works. The
browsers, debugger, tools, refactoring browser, sunit runner etc etc -
they are really nice. Envs like Eclipse sure looks "glitzy" but they
don't deliver the same "immersive" and "immediate" feel that Smalltalk
envs do. The ability to write code *anywhere* or inspect *any object*
and so on - it rocks.

> I try to use Squeak and am not even quite sure where to begin learning
> about Monticello and Magma, let alone try to understand what is a
> â—“Projectâ—?.

Many Squeak developers never use Projects (including myself). They are
mainly a vehicle for eToys, demos or multimedia presentations etc. When
doing "normal" Squeak/Smalltalk programming I don't think many people
use them.

Monticello is pretty easy to use once you figure out a few small things,
perhaps I should write a tutorial on that on my blog. But Colin Putney
has probably already done it pretty good here:

	http://wiresong.ca/Monticello/

Magma is pretty well documented on the Squeak Swiki:

	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/Squeak/2665

...and of course has its own list. :)

> I know from experience that I could figure all of this out with time.
> However, I would rather save some time.
> 
> Any advice is appreciated.

Gjallar (http://swiki.krampe.se/gjallar) that I am developing uses both
Seaside and Magma and perhaps the code could be interesting to check
out. It probably forms a reasonable "framework" for any app.

> Regards,
> 
> Grant

regards, Göran


More information about the Seaside mailing list