I remember from the Logo-camps in the Netherlands a child,
that was proudly writing the longest program of all...
Then a Belgium professor came in and said: 
"what you are doing can be done in one line, let me show you."
That day the boy did leave the camp..
So I recognize your experience.

Mine is longer ago:
we had to create punch-cards to feed the computer. 
(There were already terminals, but it was good for your education.)
The philosophical part of a punchcard was nice:
"the moer information you store in the holes, the lighter it becomes."
But after destroying the same card for the fourth time we went to the pub.
(and sneaked in the terminalroom the next day)   

So what me wonders most:
How could you then - with your childhood experience -
survive the initiation in Smalltalk/Squeak ?

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Grimes [mailto:alangrimes at starpower.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 4:10 PM
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: Lots of concurrency

<snip>

The biggest gripe about my logo days is that I never was able to
understand the big picture of what was going on. Sure, making the turtle
act like a dope was easy as anything but it didn't give me any clue as
to how this could possibly relate to writing real software. Most
notably, there was a really cool shell called "superdos" (Which runs
only on DOS 2.x and 3.x); How do I get that flaming turtle out of my
sight and make stuff that is actually cool? 

In a summer camp one time with Logo Writer I spent the entire time
writing a patheticly stupid game. I turn around and someone else in the
same room had designed a game that had actual rooms in it that could be
navigated 3D-man style. The memory still drives me up the wall... 

In highschool I was furrious at other kids who knew the mysteries of 32
bit programming and stuff where the computer lab (in 1995) was still
running off of dual-flopy Zenith XTs... I really wanted to rip their
lungs out...

I don't know what the hell I wasn't doing or wheather it was even my
fault at all... 

I have finally achieved an understanding of what goes on in my windows
3.11 machine that I feel that I would loose part of my soul if I ditched
it in favor of Linux. (Linux sucks for countless other reasons too). 

Sorry for bending your ear like this.... 

-- 
Uncle Sam has the Gremlin's touch.
http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/  <my website.