"Squeak as the best documented Smalltalk system"
+1

30 tutorials is a great idea, but don't forget video.
A video walkthrough of each tutorial would be excellent and would serve for
teaching tool usage as well.

I love the smell of progress in the morning!

Regards,
Sam


Sam S. Adams, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Research
Mobile: 919-696-6064, email: ssadams at us.ibm.com
Asst: Kenndra K. Quiles. (732) 926-2292 Fax: (732) 926-2455, email:
Kenndra at us.ibm.com
<<Hebrews 11:6, Proverbs 3:5-6, Romans 1:16-17, I Corinthians 1:10>>


squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org wrote on 04/28/2010 08:15:35
AM:

> Hannes Hirzel <hannes.hirzel at gmail.com>
> Sent by: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>
> 04/28/2010 08:15 AM
>
> Please respond 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>
>
> cc
>
> Subject
>
> Re: [squeak-dev] What is the plan for 4.2?
>
> Thank you Michael for your detailed and interesting answer.
> I put in some comments below
>
> --Hannes
>
> On 4/26/10, Michael Haupt <mhaupt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Hannes,
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Hannes Hirzel
<hannes.hirzel at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> However for the vision part you brought up the idea of
> >>
> >>   "Squeak as the best documented Smalltalk system"
> >>
> >> I like this idea.
> >
> > cool, thanks. :-)
> >
> >> A friend of mine is a 70 year old mathematician who used to work for
> >> IBM 40 years ago. She says that she was taught at that documentation
> >> is 50% of the product. I think this still applies. ...
> >
> > It certainly does!
> >
> >> API documentation is fine but process oriented documentation is needed
> >> in addition.
> >
> > Absolutely. I don't really know about others, but I usually learn much
> > better from tutorials, extrapolating usage patterns, than from sheer
> > API documentation. Recently, I learned how to use Java 7's
> > INVOKEDYNAMIC by reading the API documentation from alpha to omega.
> > That was interesting, but not much fun, I can tell you.
> >
> > A much different but very interesting approach is the one Bruce Tate
> > takes in his upcoming book "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" (Pragmatic
> > Programmers), in which he introduces (in the given order) Ruby, Io,
> > Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell. Each language is briefly
> > introduced at a high level, and then there are examples. Lots of them,
> > and they very very quickly leave "Hello, world" style things behind,
> > introducing the really interesting bits of those languages without
> > getting overly complicated. (The Haskell chapter has not yet been
> > written, but the Clojure one has just been released in beta stage.)
> >
> > Another great text is "Real World Haskell" by Bryan O'Sullivan, Don
> > Stewart, and John Goerzen. A wonderfully practical book on a
> > supposedly academic language. During the first few chapters, the
> > authors walk you through accessing the file system already, and some
> > chapters on, there is a complete bar code reader, from parsing the
> > input file (GIF, I think) over adjusting the layout of the code to
> > scanning the bars and emitting the code. *Cool*.
> >
> > What I want to say is that such things are needed for Squeak. Not at
> > the same order of magnitude (I'm talking about books with several
> > hundreds of pages each), but in the same vein. I'm also not talking
> > about SBE - it's wonderful and important, but concentrates on the
> > tools more than on building mid-scale or larger-scale applications.
> >
> >> Maybe we could have a goal of motivating 30 people contributing to
> >> documentation. Everyone writing a little tutorial and with a small
> >> sample application.
> >
> > Or 15 people with 2 tutorials each, or 10 with 3, or whatever.
>
> YES,
> One or two people probably will provide 5 tutorials, maybe three
> people 3 tutorials and the rest two or one tutorials.
>
> 30 tutorials is a reasonable goal I think. There are people in the
> documentation thread who have shown interest.
> Here
>
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-April/149074.html

> and more here
>
>
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-April/149174.html

>
> Some of them might have tutorials where just some dusting off is
> needed and a check if it still works in 4.1.
>
> For writing the tutorials my recommendation is to use Torsten
> Bergmann's HelpSystem. As it is now it is good enough I think. And it
> can by loaded through the help menu entry 'Extending the system' as of
> now.
>
>
> >> A calculator, a game, puzzles, a scrapbook, a world clock, ToolBuilder
> >> examples, a small parser, some simulations, a little spreadsheet for
> >> doing a simple budget, a flash card came, a sound library browser, an
> >> outliner, the HelpSystem (with tags), a browser for flickr, a curl
> >> plugin example, example accessing this NON-relational databases (JSON
> >> based), a website done with Http view, links to Seaside more
> >> examples,.... you name it.
> >
> > I could contribute a Z80 emulator. And probably a Smalltalk VM. ;-)
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
>
>
> You mention the upcoming book of Bruce Tate "Seven Languages in Seven
> Weeks" (Pragmatic Programmers), in which he introduces (in the given
> order) Ruby, Io,
> Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell.
>
> You mention that it will contain 'lots of examples'.
>
> That is what we need.
>
> Regarding the Z80 emulator. Yes I think that is a good idea. I assume
> it runs old Z80 games at a reasonable speed these days?
>
> And maybe that example could be used for an implementation of the MMIX
> RISC computer
> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/mmix.html
>
> And this would lead to a generic set of classes for implementing these
> kinds of emulators.....
>
> Anyhow it need not be. The Z80 emulator as such is fine.
> Other people on the list might provide other interpreters.
>
> As the heading of this thread is 'What is the plan for 4.2?' we should
> try to come up with a list
>
> - title
> - summary
> - main responsible,
> - other contact persons
> - status
>
> (it's OK for the time being if this list stays within this email thread)
>
> Going through the wiki could be helpful as well. A suggestion, please,
> for all people who start doing this, may I kindly ask you to "earmark"
> pages on that wiki you think are useful with the tag
> 'RelevantForSqueak41"
>
> --Hannes
>
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