Documentation, more, more

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Tue Sep 9 18:15:36 UTC 2003


mwgrant2001 <mwgrant2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
'> much of what i see at the squeak internet sites is interface(plugins,

> widgets, morphs) or multimedia related. just the reason i don't like 
> windows---widgetitis compounded with gadgetitis. 
Good point. I guess we expect people to learn Smalltalk from general
Smalltalk resources (books, free or otherwise). What information do you
think is missing, exactly? where should it be in the Swiki?

> the 
> rigidity and size of the class structure is definite an impediment to 
> learning smalltalk. smalltalk is almost crystalline and it is already 
> so big. i envision myself falling into a woody allen-esque neurotic 
> paralysis, unable to act on any matter as i worry over where to put 
> any classes i might develop! 
Please elaborate. What is complicated? 
- having to use classes (and deciding what to call them?)
- having to place classes in class categories?
- finding your way in all of the existing class categories?
- something else I can't even guess?

> consider winston's 'on to smalltalk'. a prescriptive book, good for 
> many but not all, winston is wed to 'ste'. but what if it were 
> updated using squeak? guzdial's books certainly can help one put 
> one's arms around the whole of squeak at some moment frozen in time, 
> but much of the effort seems to be expended on the interface and all 
> the different goodies. kaehler's dolphin book is definitely a 'how-
> to' book but now we have the dolphin interface. and so on. my point 
> is that significant time must be invested on environment specific 
> features when learning any smalltalk implementation. 
IIUC, the problem is that Smalltalk books are 
- dialect specific
- focused on the environment, which is again dialect specific.

This stems from Smalltalk being designed from the ground up as
language+library+environment. 

Which of the free books (or others) do you consider the best one for
learning the language/libraries/environment as present in Smalltalk? 

> i also found learning r to be much more easy than squeak.
[books]
> probably none, but if one changes 'books' to 'learning material and 
> resources', i counter with: compare the r project with squeak and its 
> swikis. and what about python.org? 
Please do compare them. We're not very familiar with them. Can you be
specific and give pointers to the most useful elements?

> finally,when all is said and done, i believe that the squeak 
> community is a raucous community because it wants to be and that to 
> me is part of its charm. exploring the cutting edge requires the 
> freedom to explore--the rest of us will just have to accommodate that 
> or find an vehicle. moreover it would be enjoyable to contribute some 
> day. i'll work on that.
That's good to hear. As you might have understood from above, I at least
do think that we could quite easily leverage our documentation more
effectively, and create a situation where Squeak is about as easy to
enter as Python. Your help would be appreciated.

Daniel



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