Hi.. leftie! :-)

"leftie2100" <leftie2100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Considering the supposed emphasis on using Squeak as a teaching tool,

Well, first of all - not all who use Squeak use it for that. Sure, the
original reasons for the making of Squeak was as a tool to *build* such
environments. Squeak itself was actually not meant for the kids - at
least not immediately. 

> I guess I find these reasons to be a really poor excuse. What good is
> a great tool to the public as a whole if the only people who can use
> it are the developers?

Excuse? I gave no excuses. I just tried to explain things. :-)

Please refrain from talking in terms of blame, excuses etc - it is
precisely the thing that ticks people off. We are all in this for fun!
And there is not a single person in this community that owes anything to
anyone. Noone here *needs* to do stuff. Noone here is *obligated* to do
stuff.

> The lead developers need to make development of good documentation
> just as central to releases as the code itself. Until they demand that
> documentation be completed and updated before software is released, it
> won't be. The lead developers need to take charge of the documentation
> process instead of allowing themselves to let others take this "chore"
> off their hands. The attitude I'm seeing here that the documentation
> is a necessary evil that must be "grinded out' sounds like it very
> well could be a significant part of the problem. Writing can be fun to
> do if you go about it in a light-hearted fashion and that type of
> writing also engages the reader.

I agree with you in all this. I was trying to be short and frank and
perhaps it came out wrong. I was just trying to explain why *all efforts
to this date* for various reasons have failed or at least not succeeded
as planned. This doesn't mean that I want things to stay the way they
are. Definitely not. As you may have noted I did try to be constructive.

I too feel that we need to solve the issue. I just don't think it can be
"solved" by simply effort. We need a better environment that
accommodates the documentation naturally, and not just as a bunch of
parallell stuff not in synch. We simply need better tools - and then,
but not until then, I think that a change in *us* (how we work, what we
produce) can come about.

> Personally, I know a bit about writing, but I know nothing about
> programming.  I'm a programming newbie that would really like to learn
> Squeak, but I'm pretty much kept from doing that because of your
> current documentation situation. I read this list because I keep

I note the word "your". Please say "our". :) Seriously, we are all in
this together - newbies and everyone.

> hoping I'll read some new focused learning resources have been
> created. So when I read that many feel "coding is fun, documentation
> is not" on the threads, it doesn't do much for my confidence that I'll
> ever get the chance to use Squeak.

You deliberately misunderstood me, or at least you chose to read my
posting from the worst possible angle :-)

But nevertheless it is a fact that many of us programmers like to build
software and don't necessarily find much satisfaction in building
parallell documentation. It is just a fact. And it has nothing to do
with Squeakers - it is a known fact in general.

And that is (again) the reasons for my proposal. I just acknowledge this
fact and want us to produce a better environment that turns
"documentation" into something naturally entwined with the development
effort and thus something fun and also unavoidable ;-).

So in fact - I am your best friend here - but you aren't seeing that.
:-)

> If you guys really want to be the Squeak evangalists you seem to all
> claim you want to be, you're going to have to have a complete attitude
> change about things like complete centralized documentation and the
> creation of Squeak programming texts for those new to programming.

Sigh. I do not claim to be a Squeak evangelist. :)

And I don't believe in centralizing stuff, I rather like orderly
decentralization thus getting the benefits of centralization AND
decentralization. Like SqueakMap for example.

And when it comes to Squeak tutorials etc I personally think there are
TONS of it out there. But it hasn't been properly cataloged perhaps. I
do think the Squeak Swiki has tons of links though, including to free
professional books on Smalltalk.

So I don't agree with the lack of tutorials etc. I *do* agree with you
on the lack of good reference documentation - but I have already
discussed that.

regards, Göran