On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Stephan B. Wessels wrote:

> On 3/30/02 3:09 PM, "Bijan Parsia" <bparsia at email.unc.edu> wrote:
> 
> >>  You might get
> >> someone to write "Squeak for dummies".
> > 
> > The chief value of which, afaict, would be that there would be a Squeak
> > book that I would not, and would not *want*, to own.
> > 
> 
> No no no.  Free market system alert.

No no no. I *am* using the Free market system. I tend to buy/collect
Smalltalk books. I strictly avoid "for Dummies" etc. books. 

>  I'll buy the book just to:
>     1) encourage the author to write more Squeak books

If it's not an author I already know, I would still want to discourage
them from writing *such* books.

>     2) encourage the publisher to publish more Squeak books

Similarly. Really. An O'Reilly book has some cachet. A For Dummies book
just sucks. IMHO.

>     3) to show people that there really are all kinds of Squeak books
> available when they see my technical reference shelf.  Squeak books are top
> shelf right next to Smalltalk-80.

Yes yes. I own all the Squeak books and most of the Smalltalk books and
quite a few Prolog books (oops).

> You know where my Java books are, right?
> 
> That's a little bit on the silly side.  But I tend to encourage anything
> that promotes Squeak.

I *hope* it is evident that I do to. But that tendancy gets overridden on
occasion. I can't see doing all that much for the sake of a For Dummies
book.

But that's just me. I really hate the For Dummies type books. Really
really. I have no problem with *introductory* books, but I think we can do
better in general.

There are flaws in the current set of Squeak books, but at least they
exist :) I'm watching the Ruby shelf, and that set of books is growing
faster, but I find them, overall, to be rather unpleasent (IMHO). Indeed,
a turn off. Python suffered a bit from this too.

We have a good textbook, a really need anthology, and an interesting
tutorialy thingy. Just keeping them updated (they aren't!) is a huge
task. Churning out a slew of crap books seems a waste.

I, of course, wouldn't *sabotage* a Squeak for Dummies, but I hereby
discourage it.

Cheers,
Bijan "Java sucks" Parsia.