Newbie point of view regarding Squeak

Bernard Notarianni bernard_notarianni at yahoo.fr
Tue Jan 4 06:55:35 UTC 2005


Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire <at> ext.cri74.org> writes:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> Regarding the recent loong thread related to the future of Squeak and 
> suggested road map, I would like to give some points of view as a newbie 
> to Squeak and Smallktalk in general.
> An outsider may have complete different point of view worth reading.

Good, I am also an outsider and newbie to Squeak.

> 
[...]
> 
> - When a new comer hit the Squeak reference page of Squeak it gets to 
> http://www.squeak.org. Do we need to comment about its quality?

Yes. If you can do better, propose it.

> After a few click it will get to http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak it 
> looks a bit better, much better, not because the information is well 
> organised (it is a nightmare) but only because there is a lot of 
> valuable information to find.

Thank you very much to everybody to have taken some of their time to write those
pages. Hillaire, do not hesitate to propose better organisation.
 
> So to say the true, the first contact with Squeak through the web is not 
> very good. Until now, the only professional looking web site I found was 
> in German http://www.squeak.de, the one from Small-land is also quite 
> nice, but the German one is much better structured. (hints: 'Provide 
> guidance in the User Interface, in particular newbie need that')

Not much professional looking web sites, maybe because there is not many people
paid to do open-source squeak web sites. But do not hesitate to sponsor some of
them!

> 
> - It looks like Squeak is an orphaned project. Where are the leaders? 
> Where are the founding fathers? Beside demonstrating how the UI was 
> invented by themseleves can they help the Squeak community to be organised?

Sincerely, I did not see many communities organised at this level:
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/, even in professional organisations (private
or public)

> 
> - Only one devel. list covers the different *core* aspect of Squeak. 
> Squeak is like a whole system to itself covering VM, compiler, library, 
> UI, multimedia. I cannot image that the 
> linux-kernel+GCC+libc+Xwindow+Gnome could have been developped with only 
> one developper mailing list.

LOL! Dont try to expect Squeak to be has complex as other platform. Actually, it
is simpler and more efficient. That does it mean is is simple...it is just
simpler as a whole.

> At some point it really shows that Squeak developpement is poorly 
> organised in the community.
It show Squeak is coherent and understandable, (and then that even you could
contribute!) Again, have a look here: http://people.squeakfoundation.org/

> 
[...]
> Oh, a few last words, again related to technical aspect of Squeak and 
> newbie.
> A simple mandatory rule to follow when adding new classes to the core of 
> Squeak will be that only well documented class can get in. I can assure 
> you that newbie will thanks you.

Frankly, they are plenty of good books to learn Squeak and SmallTalk
(http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html), and everything is easy to
understand, as far you take some time to try to understand. But it is more or
less the same thing on linux, or other kind of stuff.








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