[Squeakfoundation]Brainstormin'

Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:42:55 +0100

Dear Mark,

At 10:52 21-1-02 -0500, you wrote:

>Dr. Maartensz, I agree deeply with your argument for integrating 
>Squeak into Universities.  That's why I'm doing the things I'm doing, 
>such as the books and the workshop.

I am a "drs." - which translates as M.A./M.Sc. in US terms - at present,
though I am  supposed to get a Ph.D. this year (the work being mostly
done). But this is merely to straighten out the titular prefix stuff, about
which Cees de Groot rightly remarked that most are in it for the money, not
the knowledge. 

>It's not just Georgia Tech using Squeak in real classes.  Visit 
>http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mmworkshop -- Bucknell and U. 
>California-Santa Barbara are using it, as are Portland State, UC-San 
>Diego, and Pepperdine.  You're right that it would be great to get 
>into some top tier schools, but that takes time.  You're a student of 
>history, sir -- you know that "revolutions" are not the 
>all-of-a-sudden thing that they're often portrayed as.  Instead, 
>there's typically a long, slow, quiet burn before a sudden awareness 
>by the populace. I like that Squeak has a growing, intense community. 
>When Squeak "suddenly" appears at top-name universities, it will 
>appear as a revolution to many.

You are quite right, and I am glad to hear about  some universities using
and teaching it I didn't yet know about. My general point was and is in
line with Tim Rowledge's "Get off your butts!", in the sense that I see a
group of dedicated people working hard on a very good thing - that needs
not only good developers (which there are), but also an "officially
recognized status" in society, in the universities, and in the media. 

>I disagree, though, with your argument for documentation.  Yes, of 
>course, more and better documentation would be great, but that's not 
>what's holding Squeak back.  Squeak 2.7 and 2.8 were and are terrific 
>releases -- many people are using them happily (e.g., some of my grad 
>students are quite happy with those and won't upgrade yet).  The old 
>documentation and the "old" books still work quite well for those.  

Well - the problem here is basically the audience you seek or have. In your
case, with your students, you are probably right. But what I am thinking of
is getting students who are not specializing in computing getting Squeak by
way of a university course. Here in Amsterdam, the social sciences
faculties, for example, offer courses in Java, which to me is mostly a
waste of time, and to those who took such courses - that I spoke with -
usually a turn off from programming. 

These are students who are supposed to get to grips with a new language
while having little or no experience with programming, and who spend some 3
months of course points on it. The general result seems to be - except for
a few - that they give up on programming, having gotten thoroughly lost in
the technicalities of Java. I can't blame them, and in fact think they are
right - about Java, not about programming.

>I found your reference to trying to tide over "genuine academics 
>through the current Post-Modern Dark Age" intriguing, but if you 
>believe that, is only Squeak 3.2 good enough to tide over genuine 
>academics?  People on the main list sometimes joke that there's 
>nothing new since Smalltalk-72, but there's a certain truth to that. 
>The old isn't bad just because the new is better.

The "Post-Modern Dark Age" referred to a point Cees de Groot made about
modern students not being interested in academic knowledge anymore. 

What I have in mind as regards the U.S. is fairly well if somewhat
bombastically explained by: 

Alan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind - How Higher Education Has
Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students."

This was published more than 10 years ago, and meanwhile the situation has
NOT improved. (But I am aware these are large issues not easily discussed
rationally by e-mail, and certainly not with people who were mis-educated
through no fault of their own. One simple example of this is that my
generation of Dutch academics could read English, German and French with
little problem, and had some Latin and Greek when having passed grammar
school. The later generations only know broken English. By my lights they
have been cheated out of the chance to get to grips with large chunks of
written civilization my generation at least got the chance to read if thus
inclined.)

>The latest-and-greatest truly is great, but it's a constantly moving 
>target.  Technology will only help with getting documentation 
>available to a small extent -- good documentation is HARD to do. 
>Documentation will ALWAYS be behind, sir, but I don't believe that 
>it's a dire situation.  There are LOTS of features in 2.8 through 3.2 
>that I don't know how to use.  That's okay -- Squeak is still a 
>wonderful tool to think and learn with.  What I know about Squeak 
>transfers forward and helps me to learn new things.  I spend a lot of 
>time in my first week of classes on how to find things (via the 
>Method Finder and Explorers, etc.)  What Squeak lacks for in 
>documentation, it makes up for in tools for self-discovery.

Again, I basically agree - with my qualification I made above: Being so
much impressed by Squeak's potential, I want to see it learned by
university-students of most or all subjects, and this simply makes it
necessary to have course materials that allow this to be done in the space
of a few months - and WITHOUT disgusting most of them by the sort of
technicalese that is Java.

>Squeak's growing -- maybe not as fast as one might like, but 
>revolutions do take time.  "Lack of documentation" should not be used 
>as an excuse -- go ahead and write the next set of documentation that 
>you see that will be useful, get Squeak in your own universities, and 
>gather people face-to-face as you describe.  I'm not a hacker with 16 
>hours a day to explore Squeak, sir -- I'm an over-worked associate 
>professor teaching 150+ students a semester with three kids under 10. 
>It is possible to do great things with Squeak -- now, as it is today.

I certainly didn't intend to criticize you - indeed, you have been doing
what I recommend should be done, thereby also showing what I recommend is
possible. "Chapeau!" as they say in French. ("Hats off!") 

What I did have in mind were some people on the list (I won't name) who
sometimes seem to forget that in actual fact most people who are impressed
by Squeak and who are not computer scientists or students thereof must
somehow be able to learn its basic concepts and ways of working in a few
months, inbetween other stuff they have to do, and without having a solid
grounding in computing.

Apart from that, I may have an inclination to sometimes phrase things (too)
sharply to make my point. My sincere apologies if I offended you - in fact,
you are an example to many, and have done excellent work which I thank you
for.

And part of the intent of my mail was to move OTHER people with academic
positions to try to do as you did. This IS difficult - what with
administrations, university bureaucracies, financing of courses, Squeak
being hardly known etc. - but it surely is worth trying. 

I hope the upcoming "flagship demo" of Squeak News may make a positive
difference in this regard, simply by showing others what is possible with
Squeak, and putting it under the noses of university administrators etc. to
show them there is more and better than Java to teach to students who are
taking - mostly enforced - courses in programming for their degrees.

Best regards,

Maarten.

>Mark
>
>-- 
>--------------------------
>Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
>Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
>Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
>(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu
>http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html

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Maarten Maartensz. Homepage:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ 
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