On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, PhiHo Hoang wrote:

[snip]
> > Well, Mark Guzdial wrote and edited some books for Squeak and the
> > anthology at least is available on the net. Testimony to a fair number of
> > people who love Squeak "so much".
> 
>     Wholeheartly agree. Have you read Dave's book for Ruby ?

Yes. It didn't really appeal all that much to me. I don't care overmuch
for the "Pragmatic Programmer" style, and it got a little referencey
rather quickly.

It did give me enough sense of Ruby to realize that though it has a fair
bit of Smalltalk in it, and some interesing bits, it really has TMPWTDI
for my taste.

(I.e., Too Many Perl Ways To Do It :))

>     Is there 'a book for Squeak like the one Dave wrote for Ruby' available,
> on or off the net ? Your pointer is very much appreciated.

Well, how "like" does it have to be? There's nothing, to my mind and old
memories, that quite fits it. Ruby is, or was, a much simpler system, with
no tools, etc.

I'm currently reading *Squeak: A Quick Trip to Objectland*. It's good, if
a little basic (thus far). Not referency AT ALL.

Mark's textbook is excellent, if a little dated (circa 2.7) and not
referency. But it's as much about OOP as Squeak in particular. There's a
version available online, I believe, but I don't recall where.

The Squeak anthology has some tutorial type chapters. Well worth
it. They're online.

(Check the Squeak swiki...a link from the squeak.org page might be a good
idea.)

I agree that publicizing these things would be nice.

> > While I'm sure you didn't mean it that way,
> 
>     You are correct. (as usual ;-)
> 
> > it does come of sounding more than a little ungrateful.
> 
>     Not a bit, please accept my apologies if any one felt that way. No
> offense intended.

Apologies accepted.

> >>   Please help to make Squeak THE better one.
> > It certainly makes me a little tired and uninteresting in helping.
> 
>     Now, look what I did. Hate me all you want,

Alas, I don't want to hate you at all :)

> but please help to make
> Squeak THE better one.

Hmm. I'd rather just have it be a good one. Better than it is, even.

>     While I'm sure you didn't mean it that way,

Er....Ok.

> I just want to make it look
> like you meant it that way. Then you might have a laugh, don't feel that
> much offended, less tired and more interesting in helping ;-)

Er...Ok.

If you got permission from David Thomas and Andrew Hunt....oops they
released it under the Open Publication License so you don't need to.

Here's a 45 minute or more shot at a simplistic conversion:

	http://www.unc.edu/~bparsia/squeak/squeakfromrubyintro.htm

I'd want to ok it with those guys before going on, and large chunks are
just inappropriate, and a cooler thing would be to put both
languages/environments side by side, and you'd need to do ide stuff way
earlier for Squeak.

But there's nothing stopping you from churning out a hacked version of
the book, if you like it so much. It's work, but not unbelievably hard
work. Some sections would have to go, and some would have to be entirely
rewritten.

Anyhoo.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.