What is Squeak?

Michael Latta lattam at mac.com
Mon Dec 20 19:25:43 UTC 2004


I agree with many of your sentiments.  Squeak is very hard to approach 
as a new user, even with tons of Smalltalk background.  Publishing is a 
hard business, and authors only make money on the mass market.  But, 
part of the issue with the Squeak books is price.  At $100 for both 
books, you are not going to get new users to buy them.  Only the 
committed Squeaker will buy them.  Yes, there are Java and OpenGL books 
selling in that price range, but for a niche market they are 
overpriced.

Michael


On Dec 20, 2004, at 11:05 AM, Mark Guzdial wrote:

> Congratulations, PhiHo!  You finally annoyed someone enough with your 
> comments that you get a response!
>
> On Dec 19, 2004, at 10:53 PM, SmallSqueak wrote:
>>> I think we should make Squeak recognizable to people who have heard 
>>> of
>>> it via public means like Alan's talks and the nublue book.
>>
>>    If Alan and Dan don't care then who cares ?
>>
>>    Do the authors of the Squeak books care ?
>
> The point isn't whether Alan or Dan cares.  The point is to encourage 
> the future members of the community.  I didn't write the white book 
> nor co-edit the nublue book for people ALREADY in the Squeak 
> community.  I wrote them for newcomers, to introduce them to Squeak 
> (white book) and to the wonderful stuff inside/behind Squeak (nublue 
> book).  So, yes, it is a concern if these newcomers go to 
> http://www.squeak.org and find something that is unrecognizable as 
> "Squeak."
>
>>    Did they do anything to bring the contents of these books up to 
>> date ?
>
> The last update that I did was for Squeak 3.2 -- visit 
> http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/squeakbook/  to see that update (just 
> like it says in the book).  I can't get Prentice-Hall to publish a new 
> edition, though -- not with a couple thousand unsold books in the 
> warehouse.
>
> I'd like to produce some more updated Squeak materials.  We continue 
> to use Squeak in our classes at Georgia Tech 
> (http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/cs2340), and we've started discussions 
> about building a new course using Squeak for some of the new 
> computing-related degree programs we're building.  Based on a few 
> discussions, we might even be able to find a publisher for a new book 
> on design that happens to use Squeak.
>
> But it's hard to grok Squeak these days.  There are lots of "code 
> words" out there that are hard to decipher.  It took me a long time to 
> figure out that "Mantis" has something to do with bug-reporting (and 
> I'm still not sure what yet), and I'm still not clear on the 
> relationship between "Monticello" and "SqueakMap."  (And now there's 
> something called "SqueakPeople" that I have no clue about.) Terms like 
> "change set" and "file list" and "browser" provide a lead as to what 
> they're about.  I know about the sources of information, like 
> searching the mailing list archive and the Squeak Swiki (and 
> SqueakFoundations and SqueakMap and...), but that's just knowing the 
> clues.  It's still a pretty complicated process to find answers to 
> what using Squeak is about today.
>
>> BTW, does any one know how many of these books were sold ?
>
> Yes, I do.  The white book has sold 3,011 units worldwide.  In the 
> first six months of 2004, there were only 42 units sold -- 21 in the 
> US, 2 in Canada, and 19 in "export" (mostly Japan and Singapore).  The 
> nublue book has sold 1,381 units worldwide.  In the first six months 
> of 2004, the nublue book sold 52 units -- 25 in the US and 27 in 
> export.
>
>>
>>    Maybe someone should start nagging the authors of these Squeak    
>> books to share their wealth derived from Squeak
>
> "Wealth"?  Have you written a book, PhiHo?  There ain't much profit in 
> most book writing endeavors.  You do it because you want to, and you 
> sink the time in because you think it's worth it. The royalty checks 
> are nice, but the profit margins are pretty thin.  I'm quite sure that 
> Prentice-Hall hasn't broken even on the nublue book.  I'm grateful 
> that Alan Apt (our publisher) was willing to take a gamble and publish 
> these books.
>
> Mark
>
> __________
> Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing/GVU
> Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
> Collaborative Software Lab, http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mark.guzdial/
>
>




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