Hi --

The basic idea is "A Personal Computer for Children of all Ages".

In the sixties, we were some of the first people (a) who started 
thinking about programming in "objects" instead of data structures 
and procedures, and (b) working and playing on "personal computers" 
instead of mainframes. When we saw LOGO (a nifty little language for 
kids based on LISP and JOSS) we thought it would be pretty darn neat 
if you could make an object-oriented language that a child could 
learn that was also powerful enough to write its own OS. If you made 
it late-bound (like LISP) then all code and other objects in the 
system could always be inspected and changed. This worked out pretty 
well.

In Squeak, we have some of these ideas updated to contemporary 
computers. Squeak is its own OS. There is a large part that is 
programmable by children. It runs on dozens of platfroms 
"bit-identically". There is quite a bit of self-contained media, 
including various kinds of 2.5D bit-map and vector graphics, a full 
3D system; quite a bit of sound media, including a MIDI player and 
editor, sampling and FM synthesis, FFT analysers, etc., and 
collaboration via: DnD of objects to other Squeaks, email, shared 
screens, and publishing of "full media" "Squeak plugin" "web-pages"; 
Squeak can act as a server, or a plugin, or run standalone, etc.

All this stuff is visible in the Squeaks that are downloadable from 
the Squeak.org site. There are supposed to be 3 somewhat overlapping 
authoring environments, that differ mainly by how much of the 
resources and details the enduser sees. The reality today is that 
only the children's and expert environments are actually usable.
   * The expert environment is what the people on this list are 
concerned with, and there is quite a bit of stuff written, look at 
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/  There are also several books 
about this level of Squeak ...
   * The young kids environment has its own website 
http://squeakland.org and there is the start of html accessable hints 
and tuturials on http://squeakland.org/super/200

Now if we could just get the whole gig documented ..... (not to 
mention get some of the rough edges rounded off ...)

Cheers,

Alan

-----
At 12:15 PM +0200 10/20/02, compufriend wrote:
>Hi
>i'm so new to squeak, i'm not even sure how comprehensive a tool it 
>is. where does it's limits lie as far as programming just about any 
>app? Is squeak just about writting training progs for kids that is 
>suppose to be interactive? If i'm looking for a real, true BEGINNERS 
>tutorial, click here to do this and then there because of that 
>style, where can i go to find?
>
>MaRaudEr


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