Dear Liang,
Glad to hear from you. Yes, as you said, there are some difficulty today in China. The commercial defacto standards, the terrible job market, all drove the student dive in the same things, They even don't know whether they like it or not.
But it is a good thing to widen their sight, isn't it? Squeak is a fresh spring rain. It is not only a kind of programming language just extend from classic smalltalk.
In my understanding, there are 2 parts in squeak: 1. a system(or a platform) for the deeper squeaker, students, hackers, programmers or scientists. 2. a "playground" or an "instruments", it is a tool for the kids in all ages to play, to learn, to understand the world, to express their ideas. The first part focus on functions(just like hardware) while the second one focus on education and play(just like software).
I believe the latter one is the real power of sqeak, stronger than any existing systems, Neither Java nor dotNet has this ability.
However, in order to let more Chinese people know this truth, our computer techicians must take the responsibility of creating a Chinese localized Squeak! I think we can do it with the help from Squeak community. Do you agree with me?
Finally, I hope I can join the Squeak China mail list, would you like to help me?
I also have a plan to translate some Squeak and smalltalk related books to Chinese.
Best regards.
Yours, Liu
On 4/11/06, Liang Peng pliangeng@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, Stef and All,
I am Liang Peng, a lecturer in CS department, Wuhan University, major in Software Engineering. Actually, we maintain a chinese squeak mailing list for squeak and smalltalk related discussion since two years ago, Squeak-cn@lists.squeakfoundation.org but not too much discussion and activity so far, because of the small number of squeak user community in China although we can offer them free books and CDs. Java, C#, VS, Eclipse is still the hotest toys for students, as you may understand in China. But if you like, I can try my best to offer you the information and help i can make.
best regards.
-- Liang Peng
squeakland@lists.squeakfoundation.org