[Squeakfoundation]Brainstormin'

[Mark Guzdial]

At 8:29 PM +0100 1/22/02, Maarten Maartensz wrote:
>
>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.

No offense taken.  Thank you for the compliments.  My point was just 
that there's so much that can be done NOW, and I wanted to make clear 
that waiting for documentation isn't fruitful.

>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.

That's pretty tricky.  Squeak is usable by CS folk, and for non-CS 
folk in a limited domain (endusers using EToys), but explaining it 
for serious use by other kinds of academics is quite a challenge. 
The issue isn't just "documentation" -- it's filling in all the 
knowledge that's behind the scenes.

Elliot Soloway and I have a piece that's going to appear in 
Communications of the ACM soon (we just turned in our final version 
this last Monday) where we argue that things like Squeak are exactly 
what's needed to attract into CS those not currently interested in 
CS.  http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/17

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