Maarten Maartensz maartens@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
Hello Hannes,
At 00:08 19-4-02 +0100, you wrote:
Maarten Maartensz maartens@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
Well ... yes: "In a sense", for 3.2 isn't finalized yet. And my intention is that a Learning & Teaching release is an image that comes with a considerable amount of Active Essays that show newbies how to work with Squeak.
One problem here simply seems to be that there are quite a few people on the developers' list who write excellent code (alas, often without comments) but far fewer people who articulate their excellent understanding of some of Squeak's many aspects in the form of an Active Essay (or BookMorph) that would make their understanding easily shared with people who haven't yet (quite) mastered those aspects.
It seems this is something that should be a SqueakFoundation effort of several people. If and when the Foundation finally gets together I am quite willing to try to do something in this direction, if indeed some others, with a better understanding of Squeak than I have at present, are also willing to do something in this direction.
A simple example of what I have in mind: I discovered Squeak in July 2001, and have more to do than just Squeaking. In SqueakNews of October there were several projects by Naala Brewster explaining aspects of Squeak which would have saved me a considerable amount of tinkering and experimenting to find out just these things that I could have grasped in 10 minutes had I had those projects in a standard Squeak image. As it was, it took some weeks of my free time.
I guess most newbies can give their own examples of "If I'd only seen such and such before, it would have saved me a lot of time and tinkering". And of course, many will give up, not through stupidity or lack of interest, but because they don't have enough free time to resolve the many introductory problems that are nowhere systematically resolved for them. Well, I think this mostly can be avoided:
If a number of knowledgeable people get together and produce some 20 or so Active Essays that more or less systematically explain the fundamentals of Squeak; have these Essays checked by the community; and include them in the official image, this would very much alleviate the problems most newbies have with Squeak, especially those who are new to Smalltalk.
Regards,
Maarten.
------------------------------------------ Maarten Maartensz. Homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ ------------------------------------------
Maarten Maartensz maartens@xs4all.nl said:
If a number of knowledgeable people get together and produce some 20 or so Active Essays that more or less systematically explain the fundamentals of Squeak; have these Essays checked by the community; and include them in the official image, this would very much alleviate the problems most newbies have with Squeak, especially those who are new to Smalltalk.
A good idea. It would also alleviate some of the user interface issues referred to elsewhere: by introducing people with things like active essays, that you can basically shape in whichever way you want them, you can make them enthousiastic and a bit knowledgable before confronting them with class browsers and other 'low level' stuff.
squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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cg＠cdegroot.com -
Hannes Hirzel -
Maarten Maartensz