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