See the "Making Of". The second time it only took me 4 minutes :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kd5YxOp73E

And please excuse my mumbling ...

- Bert -

On 2013-03-13, at 13:33, Marshall Hampton hamptonio@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks, that is helpful. I'm still having some trouble getting used to the environment but I think we can figure it out. One thing I was wondering is if an object, such as the triangle in your program, can create text and display it. Or perhaps some separate text object is needed?

Thanks again for the quick response.

-Marshall

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 2013-03-13, at 02:01, Marshall Hampton hamptonio@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi,

I am new to Squeak and Smalltalk. After reading a few tutorials I am very intrigued and impressed. Brief background for me: I am a mathematician, I am fairly skilled in Python, and I have worked at to varying degrees with C, C++, Java, Pascal, Basic, Fortran, Javascript, Ruby, R, and Mathematica.

I am homeschooling my daughter, who is 9. She is quite proficient at Scratch. A week ago I decided to give her a very brief tour of other programming languages by having her write a "Hello Pythagoras" program in each language. This program should print "Hello Pythagoras" somehow, and then ask the user for two inputs (call them A and B). It should then print sqrt(a^2 + b^2).

For her third language she chose Squeak, since she knew that Scratch was written in it. I would like to have her write the "Hello Pythagoras" program using Morphic objects, in a visually appealing way. So far I have had some trouble finding a tutorial that covers relevant information. I am sure I can figure this out by poking around long enough but if anyone has a pointer to documentation that might help, or a similar example, that would be great and much appreciated.

Here is how to do it in Etoys (using the Squeakland version from http://squeakland.org/ ):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxNsYz52QA

Took maybe 10 minutes, and that's including the graphical display of the triangle :)

• Bert -

Ahh, thanks, that is perfect. Exactly what I needed. It is extremely helpful to see screencasts with Squeak. I can recreate this with the Squeak-4.3 that we are using, but maybe I'll switch to the etoys version.

Again many thanks for the quick and useful responses.

-Marshall

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:

See the "Making Of". The second time it only took me 4 minutes :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kd5YxOp73E

And please excuse my mumbling ...

• Bert -

On 2013-03-14, at 03:06, Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r@gmail.com wrote:

Speaking of Pythagoras, Alan Kay demos a visual proof for the theorem that's super easy for just about anyone to understand right away using Etoys in his TED talk, which is worth a look:

http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html

I like a slightly different proof even better, because it doesn't need to rotate the shapes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md5UBv3pVBE

- Bert -

On 2013-03-13, at 15:54, "Sean P. DeNigris" sean@clipperadams.com wrote:

Marshall Hampton wrote

...

I am homeschooling my daughter, who is 9. She is quite proficient at Scratch. A week ago I decided to give her a very brief tour of other programming languages...

For her third language she chose Squeak, since she knew that Scratch was written in it.

Marshall, that is beautiful! I'm touched by your dedication and wisdom. I especially love that you let her choose the language, and her rationale for choosing Squeak. Reading your post, I feel the excitement of exploration, falling down the rabbit hole...

Please ask any other questions. What you're doing is so important. Now if we can get this to the 50 million school-aged children in the U.S., we'll be all set ;)

... not to forget the more than 1 billion school-aged children world-wide.

- Bert -