Stephane Ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote...

>Did Kim tried the new syntax with kids?
>
>It would be good to evaluate (two groups one we the normal and one with new)
>if the new syntax is better.
>
>What is the process that you are planning to put in place to evaluate the
>effectivness of the new syntax?
>
>Only how we react or also kids?
>
>>From the experience we have with kids here. They do not have any problems 
>with the old syntax.

Hi Stephane -

I'm glad to hear it.  It must be obvious that I'm as much of a fan of normal Smalltalk as anyone.

Frequently in our history, we have tried to step back and take a fresh look at things.  Alan and others of us have wondered, numerous times, if changing things a bit this way or that might make Squeak more "approachable" for newbies, or for people who are used to other scripting languages available in various corners of the internet.  This becomes more understandable when you think of little hypercard-like bits of scripted content distributed around the internet.

So, after hand-translating a number of methods, and not being sure if we could compile this or that, I decided to bite the bullet and produce a framework for experimentation.  AS A PLACEHOLDER, I implemented a syntax that was a lot like some of our jottings, and similar to a colon-free syntax that I derived in a message (on 2/17) responding to Aran Lunzer's query about terminal keywords.

THE FRAMEWORK is what this is about.  It's even a bit of a hack compared to what one might want in a flexible syntax layer, but it does allow one to "turn on" a completely different syntax at the flip of a switch, and yet continue to save and share work in standard ST-80.  Moreover the test routine in DialectParser allows one to determine at any time whether the syntax you have implemented can decompile and recompile all 30,000 methods in the system without changing one bytecode.

As soon as the framework seems solid, I'm kind of hoping to withdraw, and let other people try some other approaches.  See, now instead of flaming, everyone can implement their own favorite syntax, and send around some real examples.  If anything looked like a clear winner, all of Squeakville could be using it a day later!  Similarly, to answer your question above, as soon as we have one we like, we can now try it out easily with kids or Disney executives or whoever.

Right now I'm a bit more excited about some experiments Scott Wallace is doing to bridge the gap between programs as text and the tile scripts in Morphic.  If one could take a beginner through the first hour of exploring Squeak, playing with "good-old" ST-80, but never having to write it, I think we would have a good start.

	- Dan