Apple hyping java...
Bijan Parsia
bparsia at email.unc.edu
Sat Mar 30 21:13:56 UTC 2002
On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Stephan B. Wessels wrote:
> On 3/30/02 3:09 PM, "Bijan Parsia" <bparsia at email.unc.edu> wrote:
>
> >> You might get
> >> someone to write "Squeak for dummies".
> >
> > The chief value of which, afaict, would be that there would be a Squeak
> > book that I would not, and would not *want*, to own.
> >
>
> No no no. Free market system alert.
No no no. I *am* using the Free market system. I tend to buy/collect
Smalltalk books. I strictly avoid "for Dummies" etc. books.
> I'll buy the book just to:
> 1) encourage the author to write more Squeak books
If it's not an author I already know, I would still want to discourage
them from writing *such* books.
> 2) encourage the publisher to publish more Squeak books
Similarly. Really. An O'Reilly book has some cachet. A For Dummies book
just sucks. IMHO.
> 3) to show people that there really are all kinds of Squeak books
> available when they see my technical reference shelf. Squeak books are top
> shelf right next to Smalltalk-80.
Yes yes. I own all the Squeak books and most of the Smalltalk books and
quite a few Prolog books (oops).
> You know where my Java books are, right?
>
> That's a little bit on the silly side. But I tend to encourage anything
> that promotes Squeak.
I *hope* it is evident that I do to. But that tendancy gets overridden on
occasion. I can't see doing all that much for the sake of a For Dummies
book.
But that's just me. I really hate the For Dummies type books. Really
really. I have no problem with *introductory* books, but I think we can do
better in general.
There are flaws in the current set of Squeak books, but at least they
exist :) I'm watching the Ruby shelf, and that set of books is growing
faster, but I find them, overall, to be rather unpleasent (IMHO). Indeed,
a turn off. Python suffered a bit from this too.
We have a good textbook, a really need anthology, and an interesting
tutorialy thingy. Just keeping them updated (they aren't!) is a huge
task. Churning out a slew of crap books seems a waste.
I, of course, wouldn't *sabotage* a Squeak for Dummies, but I hereby
discourage it.
Cheers,
Bijan "Java sucks" Parsia.
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