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first!</title></head><body>
<div>Squeakers,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Since I am teaching today, I haven't had time to digest the
overwhelming number of responses to my postings, but I am *greatly*
encouraged by them. Before I run off to class I do particularly
want to thank you Alan for your long reply...and even if some of what
I said was a bit annoying, I have to say it was probably worth it to
get you to expand on some of those projects ("Orbits",
"Springs", "Weighing", etc.) for both the
Squeakland and the SqueakDev groups.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>As far as separating the groups ... I thought at least some of
what I had to say was of interest to both groups and thought it was
probably easier for readers to skim parts they found uninteresting
than it was for me to evaluate each paragraph for suitability in each
group. And I wasn't so much "complaining" about 2000+
February postings to SqueakDev as, on the one hand, marveling at the
amount of energy and expertise in the Squeak community, and on the
other hand, feeling <font color="#000000">somewhat despondent that
there was apparently not enough of it to motivate a serious and
sustained effort to develop a stable version suitable for novice
programmers. Call that "complaining" if you must, but
it's not the kind of "complaining" you suggest.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Will my reference to 2000+ postings
confuse the Squeaklanders? Well, I *am* trying to stir the pot
a little, but I really don't think it will confuse these smart and
resourceful folks. I think Squeaklanders are hungry for more
postings (I know I am, as a member of both lists); there were 58
February 2003 posts to Squeakland, and 9 of those were from Alan Kay,
8 from Kim Rose, and 12 about the Kay/Papert talks in Toronto.
So if I'm a Squeaklander I should at least feel good that there's
lots of activity going on "behind the scenes", as it
were. With all this Balkanization of knowledge going on (Papert
1980), and given how easy it is to delete an unwanted message, I
don't want to be contributing to it by placing my contributions in
this or that segment or the Balkans.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">You're right that it's Squeak proper that
is "too fast moving" and not etoys; but more than once I
have found changes in Squeak proper causing either inexplicable
behavior in etoys or just making things break. (We try to make
things fully separate but we can never really achieve it.)<br>
<br>
</font>Let me focus on one more thing in your gold-mine of a
response, your "Food Fight" hints:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> * have an agent (smiley) create
another agent (burger) in the space next to him</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Let's suppose that smiley is in a
playfield called "fastfood".</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>smiley create</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> smiley's temp <-
burger copy</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> fastfood include
smiley's temp</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> smiley's temp's x
<- smiley's x + 25</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> smiley's temp's y
<- smiley's y</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I found "copy" and
"include" just by going through the views of the two
objects and seeing what the balloon help told me. This is the
documentation that is there, but most people don't use it. I found
that I could make a player valued variable by looking at the menu
item "change data type", etc.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>OK Alan, I get the subtle dig (maybe not so subtle). In
fact, I not only know all the balloons in etoys by heart, I have even
prepared a three-page handout called "Etoy Viewer Commands"
(incl balloon helps -- not including "do menu item") that I
will be posting to the Squeakland list (immediately after
this). There is no "include" there that I can
see! And so you shouldn't be surprised that I therefore don't
fully understand your "pseudocode". For the record,
it seems to me (and it seemed to my Stagecast Creator - literate
teachers) that having a character create another character should be
more straightforward than this in any case. Do you not
agree?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Jerry</div>
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