Thank you for these comments, Jerry. I think you're bringing up important points. I think it needs to be emphasized over and over again that Squeak is a research system. It is not a completed product, but a work in progress, and that causes ome of the frustrations teachers and other novices experience.
But John, I really don't consider myself a "novice" in the sense that I think you mean. NetLogo (the Illinois version of StarLogo) is a research system too, but I have learned to program in it pretty well, and to teach others to program in it pretty effectively themselves, **even though it is much "harder" than Squeak**.
And NetLogo/StarLogo is a moving target too, but *nothing* (maybe in the whole Universe) moves as fast as Squeak. 2005 posts to SqueakDev in the month of February alone! The plea from me is to slow the train down enough to let some of us who are in the education business do what we do best to show what you do best to the best possible advantage. As it is, we both lose. Is that too harsh? I don't know; but it seems to me even the people developing Squeak, some of whom may care not at all about education, are moving so fast in potentially different directions that it is very difficult to coordinate their (your) efforts. That can't be optimal for their (your?) goals either, can it?
Any programming environment provides challenges to non-expert users, and expert help is often needed. In my opinion many who promote computers as tools for learning say too little about the amount of support teachers and students need in order to get good results.
Amen to your second sentence; I am not quite "in the trenches" but I am closer than most, and believe me, I know this. As to your first sentence, this is part of my point, and it requires a willing suspension of disbelief on your part: Why can I not provide something even close to "expert help" on Squeak, when given comparable amounts of time on half a dozen other languages/environments I have been more than equal to the task? And if it's true for me, how many other potential educational "middlemen" are you losing? Do you care?
-Jerry