Squeakfoundation April 2002

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14 participants
13 discussions

Re: [Squeakfoundation]Re: Proposal for TWO official releases
by goran.hultgren＠bluefish.se 22 Apr '02

22 Apr '02

About comments and the "I am..." stuff etc. - I don't really care that much about how a comment is written as long as there IS a comment. And personally I find it much more important for people writing comments to remember the distinction between the class and the instance. I always get upset when I hear people blurring the lines - it really doesn't help the newbies/beginners since that is one of the things they have the most problems with (in OOP, not specifically in Smalltalk). regards, Göran

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Re: Proposal for TWO official releases
by Maarten Maartensz 22 Apr '02

22 Apr '02

Hello Carl, At 08:57 19-4-02 -0700, you wrote: > As laudable a goal as a simpler/better documented image is, I think the extra work that comes with duplication of release streams will probably mean your proposal won't capture enough support. > You may be right, but I hope to achieve something this direction when SqueakFoundation gets finally incorporated. And if nobody tries, nothing much will happen. But I cannot do it alone, and few on the list can. >In my 14 years in Smalltalk the only mechanism I've seen work that leads to well documented classes/messages is a rule by the image builder that a change file is ONLY accepted IF it leaves EVERY class touched by the changes FULLY documented (class + message comments). This causes a lot of cursing and swearing initially because it means to change even a single method you have to take on commenting the entire class. But its amazing how quickly the image gets documented, how much obsolete code gets found and removed, how many bugs are noted and fixed, and how quickly the system becomes more easily usable, reusable, and maintainable because the system is more understandable. > I have less than 1/14th of your experience with Smalltalk (but 14 years with Prolog, mostly, from which I have drawn a similar lesson about documenting and commenting code), but my initial reaction is: This sounds like a GREAT idea! So I ask others - including the proverbial gurus and the Harvesters - for their comments for this idea: Wouldn't it be wise - seeing also the state of even VW's comments! - to make it an absolute rule for the Harvesters to accept ONLY code with proper comments and at least one example, and to announce this publicly and insist on it? (If necessary, I could quote Donald Knuth on your and my side: He called this "literate programming". And as Göran pointed out, in a mail on the developer's list, and as I had found myself meanwhile, even such a fundamental Class as Set is without comment!) > Once the classes are documented as such and a system for naming method protocols is followed, I wrote an object that traversed target classes and a produced cross-referenced HTML pages documenting the public interfaces of the classes. Being able to instantly view the commented public interface for a class immensely helped reusability and respect for the public/private interface division. > Yes, I can well imagine it. I tend to learn by FAR the most using the diverse browsers and explorers and by studying the code, but one of my standard complaints is: O, this could have been SO much easier and quicker to understand if only the maker had provided a clear English comment and one or two good examples of the intended use. This is also why I am MUCH in agreement with Göran's campaign to - I think the word is - "refactor" the Class Comments, and I hereby call on all Squeak gurus to do their bit there so that the official 3.2 release can, probably for the first time in 30 years of Smalltalk (!!), come with good Comments and Examples for all classes. O, and please do not write Comments on the line of "I (this piece of comment on this piece of code) am ... " etc. For this is just categorical nonsense: Prose is not animated. Simply name the code you comment on by its name, and tell what it is intended to do, what it uses and presupposes, and give an example for its use, and don't introduce very odd idiosyncratic and metaphysical English, that also has no clear point or sense whatsoever. >Carl Gable Watts >Maarten Maartensz wrote on 18/4/02 5:00 pm: > >...I'd propose the following to both Squeak.org and the Squakfoundation: >- To maintain TWO releases as a standard policy: > A. Developers' release > B. Learning & Teaching release... Regards, Maarten. ------------------------------------------ Maarten Maartensz. Homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ ------------------------------------------

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]Re: Proposal for TWO official releases
by danielv＠netvision.net.il 20 Apr '02

20 Apr '02

I agree about the lack of class comments (I don't much like most other forms of comments). About anthropomorphizing objects - Maarten Maartensz <maartens(a)xs4all.nl> wrote: > Hello Joshua, > > At 09:22 20-4-02 -0400, you wrote: > Well ... it depends. I do, and you do - but there are quite a few > philosophers (such as Hauser or Dennett, for example) who insist that > computers think, not as a manner of speaking, but like you and I do, if not > as good or as slow as we are on some cognitive tasks. I think you hit upon an important point here - I'm just reading Kinds of Minds by Dennet and he describes three forms of explaining the behavior of things - Physical explanations (because that's the effect of those bytecodes performed sequentially, go see their definition...) Design explanations (... it is configured with a Strategy that performs the chosen algorithm...) And Intentional explanations (The hashed collections grow automatically to keep their element well spaced out). I think when trying to explain an artefact of code, it is exactly the two later forms that provide useful information to the student. The Design type of explanation is useful when trying to understand how to create such things as are being explained, and the Intentional explanations when looking at the behavior of said object as a part of a larger system. The physical kinds of explanation are great when you're merely using the artefact as an example to illustrate the underlying semantics of the execution mechanism. Maybe having too many explanations written at the physical level explains why there are so few software people know how to build things up - they've only every had things explained "downwards", if you see what I mean. As to whether objects "really" think like us, or are only usefully described that way for the edification of it's users, I'm not so dumb as to walk into this alligator's pond ;-) > Regards, > > Maarten. Daniel

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Re: Proposal for TWO official releases
by Hannes Hirzel 19 Apr '02

19 Apr '02

Maarten Maartensz <maartens(a)xs4all.nl> wrote: > Hello, > > Summarizing the drift of some recent mails I'd propose the following to > both Squeak.org and the Squakfoundation: > > - To maintain TWO releases as a standard policy: > A. Developers' release > B. Learning & Teaching release > In a sense we will have these two releases: A: version 3.3a B: version 3.2 final HJH

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Proposal for TWO official releases
by Maarten Maartensz 18 Apr '02

18 Apr '02

Hello, Summarizing the drift of some recent mails I'd propose the following to both Squeak.org and the Squakfoundation: - To maintain TWO releases as a standard policy: A. Developers' release B. Learning & Teaching release where (A) is what we have at present, is intended for knowledgeable Squeakers, and is short of documentation, and (B) comes with a LOT of documentation written inside Squeak as Active Essays and is explicitly targetted at Newbies, University courses, and learning to program. (After all, Squeak provides better facilities for its own documentation than any other language + environment I know.) Part of (B) would be a generally cleaned-up (refactored, debugged) image, that also includes Class Comments (written in clear English, please WITHOUT prose like "I am (a piece of code that) ... " and WITH plenty examples that can be run from the Comments. (Indeed, if this proposal (B) gets going it might take the form of several images, like several volumes of a book.) A good start for (B) would be to have a look at the issues of Squeak News, and one important consideration is that the contents of (B) should be not only be relatively bug-free, stable and well-commented, but also should be written in clear English and be explicitly addressed at people with little or no programming experience, while giving them a "hands on" introduction to computing with Squeak in the form of Active Essays, that show and illustrate the code they explain. To achieve (B) will need some coordinated effort, and seems to me to be a worthy target for the SqueakFoundation as a first important project. Also, to be succesfull it needs to be at least somewhat decently written and to presuppose little or no inital knowledge of Smalltalk or programming. Good starts where to look for relevant material, ideas and approaches are the issues Squeak News and projects on Bob Arnings' Superswiki. Finally (somewhat) in the present context: I agree with Lex Spoon's recent remark to the effect that "open source" is a more comprehensive term than the OpenSource.org admits, and that Squeak IS patently open source in coming with its source code. I think it unwise to restrict the meaning of "open source" to what gets the blessing of the OpenSource.org: The basic principle of open source applications, after all, is that one gets to see and manipulate all the code of the application and not whether OpenSource.org or Richard Stallmann are willing to endorse it as open source in THEIR preferred senses. Regards, Maarten. ------------------------------------------ Maarten Maartensz. Homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ ------------------------------------------

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]So....
by dmm＠yak.net 16 Apr '02

16 Apr '02

May I help with the Squeak Foundation setup? I don't know how things stand with the Foundation now, but I've just finished all the paper work for starting an operational educational non-profit and have experience with the organization of a couple of others. Having only recently returned to Smalltalk -after several years hiatus- and discovered Squeak I'd like to help. I won't have much code to offer for a while, but I'm up to speed on non-profit IRS regs. peace, donald

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[OT]The word 'bylaws' Re: [Squeakfoundation]So....
by goran.hultgren＠bluefish.se 16 Apr '02

16 Apr '02

I have (of course) been reading your discussions about how to setup SqF and the word "bylaws" got my attention. I have never heard/seen it before but I guessed it must come from the nordic languages. Swedish: by = village lag = law And there is actually a word "byalag" in Swedish. (all this seems to exist similarly in Norwegian) So it seems to mean "village law". After checking with Merriam-Webster I conclude my guess was semi-correct, "bylaw" seems to indeed stem from the scandinavian word "byalag". But there is more to learn here. In Swedish the word "lag" both means "law" and "team"/"group of people". I would guess (yes, a guess - I may be wrong) that the meaning of the word "lag" (as in "law") evolved from "byalag", because it seems to me that "byalag" in the beginning referred to a "team of men from the village" that got together when something needed to be done that required cooperation - like putting a roof on a house or something. It wouldn't surprise me if the "will" of this team more and more turned into "rules" of the village. So perhaps that is how the word lag (as in "law") came about. Ok, now you can all smack me in the head and explain to me that it actually came from Swahili or something. :-) regards, Göran

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Squeak Demo Kit Ready ;)
by stephane ducasse 15 Apr '02

15 Apr '02

Hi all It took some times ;). I promised to do this after ESUG last september.... But now I made it. I made a cool image full of projects to present Squeak. I used it Friday to make a demo and it work really well. I use now the thread navigator. You can find the image, all the projects, and all kinds of pictures, mp, midi, flash files so that demonstrators do not have to look around at http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/nonofficial.html or directly http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/April02Demo.zip I think that some of the projects contained extra images but I could figure out how to remove them. Stef If you create new projects or bug fixes, typos...please sent them to me. The idea is to create projects that minimize problems related to evolution. That's why they contained mainly text and pictures but not active objects. The objects are created during the demo. That's why I put script to load files or other magic invocations.

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]So....
by goran.hultgren＠bluefish.se 09 Apr '02

09 Apr '02

cg(a)cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) wrote: > <goran.hultgren(a)bluefish.se> said: > >So... we will start by contacting a bunch of people we know, then a > >Swiki + mailinglist would be nice. Cees? Pretty, pretty please? :-) > > > Gee, am I to host all of the Smalltalk world? ;-) > > >Of course www.squeakfoundation.org is mostly for "Squeaky things" but I > >thought this came close enough... > > > Well, we're already doing SqueakFoundation, ESUG, Dutch Smalltalk User Group, > Squeak e.V., I think we can add another one to it... Thanks! > It's on my to-do list, but I'll be off to Berlin tomorrow (for the Zope BBQ, > something entirely different), so I cannot promise that it will happen before > the return on that trip. Hey, no hurry. And teach those ignorant pythonites that they should convert to the superior tool! :-) regards, Göran

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Re: [Squeakfoundation]So....
by goran.hultgren＠bluefish.se 09 Apr '02

09 Apr '02

I had a nice evening with Thierry here and we decided to at least try to start a SWESUG "most informally" - no paperwork or anything like that yet. If there is enough interest etc then we can do the more formal stuff when time comes. So... we will start by contacting a bunch of people we know, then a Swiki + mailinglist would be nice. Cees? Pretty, pretty please? :-) Of course www.squeakfoundation.org is mostly for "Squeaky things" but I thought this came close enough... regards, Göran PS. A harddisk crash on a firewall is no fun. It happened here today... Luckily Jonas Öhrn here slapped in an IDE drive and moved it all over - pretty impressive shooting from the sysadmin hip there. DS

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Squeakfoundation April 2002