[ANN] Squeak Documentation Team formation

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Mon Sep 25 20:55:07 UTC 2006


Am 25.09.2006 um 21:43 schrieb Matthew Fulmer:

> On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 07:27:15PM +0000, J J wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
>>> Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers
>>> list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>>> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers
>>> list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [ANN] Squeak Documentation Team formation
>>> Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 22:49:14 +0200
>>>
>>> systems. The  question is if a tutorial could solve that or if  
>>> there needs
>>> to be  system changes to make Squeak less strange for newcomers -  
>>> or if we
>>> explain to everyone why this is not simple, and should not be.
>>>
>>> - Bert -
>>
>> What do you mean "and should not be".  Of course it should be.

Agreed :)

>> It should
>> be drop dead simple.  What possible argument is there for it being  
>> simple
>> in other languages yet hard in smalltalk?
>
> I think you two are agreeing, and do not realize it. There are
> three approaches to fixing a usability problem, in order of
> decreasing usefulness:
>
> 1. fix it
> 2. teach everyone how to work around it
> 3. tell everyone that the problem only arises when you do
>    something wrong.
>
> For this example, that would mean:
>
> 1. Make text processing easy
> 2. Teach everyone the hard way of text processing
> 3. Imply that squeak makes text files obsolete
>
> I believe Bert is saying that 3 has been done enough that nobody
> has really taken the problem seriously. It may not have been an
> active decision, but a general ignorance of the problem.
>
> The mere act of stating the problem makes it sound absurd, and I
> believe that was Bert's intent.

Indeed :) Although IMHO the actual text processing is quite simple  
compared to the task of deploying that text processor.

- Bert -




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