Bijan, you're preaching to the choir.  Why not open a dialog with him
and encourage him to take a second look at Squeak.  

- Stephen

P.S. Make sure you deliver a spoonful of sugar with the medicine.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Bijan Parsia
> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 3:51 PM
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: RE: Computerchannel.de: Squeak 3.0 tested
> 
> 
> --On Thursday, September 27, 2001 8:21 PM +0200 
> G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
> 
> > No, you have to separate all those good intentions and 
> efforts of you 
> > and all the other builders AND the way all this work shows to the 
> > world: This article suggest that...
> 
> Herm?
> 
> I, personally, haven't lifted a finger to make Squeak into a 
> Children's Programming Tool :)
> 
> Squeak, per se, *isn't* a Children's Programming tool, it's 
> the tool that's 
> being used to build the tool. Or something.
> 
> That the author didn't *seem* to be cognizent of all the many 
> various efforts (completely aside from Squeak) in this area 
> supports my contention that the author wasn't willing or able 
> to find the relevant stuff, even *in* Squeak.
> 
> I think the gross ignorance charge is supported by the 
> confusion over Alan Kay's relation to Squeak (alledgingly 
> joining the open source project? Huh?).
> 
> Of course, one can *always* say, "Oh well, the failure of the 
> writer was the failure of us to "market" to the writer..." 
> Baloney. Given that Squeak has *not* been rolled out as a 
> kid's thing yet (i.e., there *is* no end-user release), the 
> author 1) should have discerned that (not hard), 2) taken 
> that into account when evaluating it.
> 
> Not that that would require *softening* the evaluation of the 
> system as is. 
> It's not ready for mom and dad to download it for junior. We 
> all know that. 
> But one would have thought that the point of such an article 
> is to investigate the various bits of the system.
> 
> Take this:
> 
> " For children, the target group, Squeak is hardly suitable to enhance
>   creativity with the PC. Thus we still have to wait for a novice
>   programming language suitable for children à la Logo."
> 
> This is sheer, unadulterated baloney. *Smalltalk* can work 
> well for children.
> 
> Can you sit them in front of a raw squeak system and walk 
> away? No. But show me a logo system for which that is true?
> 
> Or this:
> 
> "Real tests with the target group (children) as well as with 
> experienced  programmers, however, show a less satisfying 
> picture.  Squeak admittedly  presents itself with a simple 
> and, after a second or third try, intuitive  interface, 
> although this mainly applies to functions like painting or  
> music. But as soon as it gets to programming itself, not only 
> the  environment appears to be complex and comparatively 
> outdated, but also the  work with Squeak itself confirms this 
> impression."
> 
> I would love to know a bit more about the testing 
> methodology. Is this the system browser, the package browser, 
> tiles, omniuser, and active essay, etc. etc. etc.
> 
> I write articles about stuff that itsn't always well 
> documented. Lack of documentation or presentation is, of 
> course, an issue. But making judgements about various bits of 
> the system based on what seems to be a lack of understanding 
> is a flaw in the author, IMHO.
> 
> So what can we derive from this article? That Squeak isn't 
> well sold to bad 
> authors/evaluators? I'll grant this. That it's not ready for 
> keyturn mom 'n' pop operation? Granted. That one would be 
> better off using Visual Basic 
> or Delphi? Huh?
> 
> Note that the problem isn't just with the author's judgements 
> about Squeak:
> 
> "Unfortunately, because a Logo successor for the PC, with 
> which everyone  can write simple and small programs, thereby 
> exploring the secrets of PC  programming, is missing so far. 
> The young programming elite of  tomorrow only can start early 
> with languages such as Visual  Basic or Delphi, which are 
> still too complex for a genuine beginner."
> 
> This is just nonesense. Deceptive nonesense. It ignores huge 
> swaths of *old*, well known work, from Hypercard to Cocoa to 
> HTML. (And why programming elite? I thought we were after 
> most everyone.)
> 
> So, did we learn anything new from this article about Squeak 
> inherently or about it's public presense? I'd argue not.
> 
> In fact, I just *did* argue not :)
> 
> On a productive type note, what *would* be cool is to try to 
> get experienced Squeaker/writers to start publishing 
> articles, or for Squeak.org/Squeakland to have pointers to, 
> say, the nuBlue book chapeter on 
> learning with Squeak or to folks who'd be willing to be 
> "press contacts".
> 
> (Also, remember that SqueakLand isn't quite up to full 
> snuff...the Squeak Central folks are still reeling from the 
> big move. One thing that would be cool is something analogous 
> to SqueakNews only targeted to kids. Maybe even 
> something like Cricket magazine! SqueakCricket would be very 
> very cool.)
> 
> Cheers,
> Bijan Parsia.
> 
>