=?ISO-8859-1?Q?st=E9phane_ducasse?= <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> You have to look at Monticello :). The idea is that a category is a 
> package then you have to mark class extension using *mycategory
> then you can publish a package on a ftp, disk, http server and this is 
> really cool. Because you get all your code away from an image in a save 
> and
> reproduceable environment. I can send you the extremely limited doc I 
> started to do for my students. (but this is really limited 3 pages).
> Shout is really cool.

Guys, this is all worth looking at for sure, but please keep in mind
what this class is like.

It's a one-semester long class.  A big selling point of Squeak in this class
has been that the students can do large projects without having to learn
lots of language syntax nor lots of specialized tools.  There is one big
thing that they have to learn, that Squeak *should* put in their face,
and that's how to program with objects.  Beyond that, everything should
be as easy as possible; e.g., you execute code by do-it on the menu, you
browse to any code in the system through a single browser, and lots of
useful libraries just happen to be pre-loaded.

In short, these guys are already working hard.  There is no room to add
more wonderful CS topics, unless you can think of something else that
should be removed (or, unless you shrink the class project -- ick!).  If
you want to think of ways to move them over to Monticello, SqueakSource,
and whatever other new goodies, then please be thinking about ways to
use them where students don't have to really think about it.  Please
think of ways that the instructors can set up an image and any necessary
servers, and then for everything to just work with no further though
from the students.  Please think in terms of replacing one current easy
practice with another easy practice.

To give you an idea where these students are: many of them never even
learn to use *change sets*.


-Lex


PS -- SqueakMap, in the semesters I've seen it used, seemed to actually
*lower* the amount of effort students needed, because they spent
less time trawling through web sites.  Kudos, Goran!!


PPS -- If Mark, of all people, overlooked SqueakMap, then we need to really
make sure that these new nifty tools get integrated into the normal development
environment eventually.  You shouldn't know you are using "Shout", "SqueakMap",
"Monticello", etc. -- it should eventually be "the code browser", "the package
browser", "the package browser", etc.