Hi jim

I think that this is an **excellent** idea because we would learn all. 
I learn much faster by looking a concrete example or demoes.

Stef

On Jeudi, oct 2, 2003, at 22:56 Europe/Zurich, Jim Benson wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Here's the idea. Over the last few years, there have been a lot of 
> changes
> in Squeak. Lots of new technologies and interfaces have been added, or 
> have
> been made available. For quite a while, we've been talking here about 
> the
> advantages of using Squeak for software development. However, it seems 
> to me
> that there is a lot of frustration at the same time. The frustration 
> comes
> from a couple of directions, usually lack of documentation and lack of
> example.
>
> Here in the States there is a television program called 'Monster 
> Garage'.
> The premise is simple; take a stock vehicle and turn it into a special
> purpose vehicle. For example, one of the shows revolved around 
> converting a
> hot dog cart into a 130 mile per hour dragster. The rules are simple. 
> The
> vehicle is designed on the first day. On days 2 thru 6, the vehicle is
> built. Day 7 is race day.
> There are two teams, a design team and a build team. The group is 
> given 3000
> USD to buy parts. If the challenge is successful, each member of the 
> team
> gets a set of tools. If unsuccessful, the team is forced to watch as 
> their
> vehicle is destroyed in spectacular fashion.
>
> So here's the idea: There are a couple of areas that would help the
> community in general. First, an example of how Squeak can be used in 
> the
> 'real world'. Second, how to 'think in Squeak'. Third, to tie together 
> some
> of the newer packages so that everyone can see how the packages can be 
> used
> in practice. All of this placed in a public forum that people can look 
> at.
>
> I started thinking of an appropriate application. Here's what I came up
> with:  a weblog server http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3437. Here's 
> my
> thinking on why this is an appropriate task. The application must be 
> simple,
> yet non-trivial. In my opinion, just a few clever snippets here and 
> there
> don't really get someone involved in a language. The weblog server is a
> straightforward data in -> store data -> massage and output data batch
> processing deal.
>
> If you're a newbie coming from the traditional web processing world, 
> Pearl,
> Python, Java, etc you recognize the problem, and get a close first 
> hand look
> on why we're excited about Smalltalk. If you're already in the Squeak 
> world,
> it gives you a chance to see how to tie together some of the more 
> recently
> introduced parts of Squeak. I think that another important part of 
> this is
> to produce documentation saying, "Here's the design decisions we made,
> here's how we implemented it" The documentation need not be verbose, 
> just
> straightforward.
>
> Another important quality of this concept; the team will have a set 
> amount
> of time to finish. This won't be one of those things where you spend 
> months
> trying to just define the perfect weblog server with a billion 
> different
> features. Also, it limits the commitment of time of  the challenge
> participants.
>
> So, I'd like some feedback on what people think of this idea. On 
> Monster
> Garage, the team usually consists of a couple of experts in a 
> particular
> field, the rest are usually very skilled 'jack of all trades'. In the 
> weblog
> server, there is an HTTP part, a data store part, and a XML-RPC part. 
> Also,
> note that this is group developed, so there's the opportunity to 
> introduce
> things like Monticello and XP/Agile programming. In general, the 
> challenge
> should have as few rules as possible. However, you should also know 
> that the
> goal is to help people grok Squeak in the context of the application, 
> not
> build something that can withstand a thermo-nuclear blast. Not 
> necessarily
> contrary goals, but elegance and straightforwardness are easy to 
> explain and
> teach.
>
> If this is something that people are interested in participating in, 
> I'd
> like to hear about it and some details as to what you think an 
> appropriate
> time frame for the challenge would be.
>
> Jim Benson
>
>