Squeak Tutorials and Learning Resources (was: what I'd like to see in Squeak)

jim jigme1968 at tom.com
Tue Feb 10 05:59:22 UTC 2004


Dear Lex:

Thank you for your answering. Sorry for replying late.

I've learned Smalltalk in past 3 years, though I haven't putting all my time 
in programming as an amateur. 
And the main purpose that I learn to programming is to solve real problems in 
my work and wish that I can help others somedays later in such as building 
some interesting sites.
Squeak is the choice. But I learned GNUSmalltalk/Stx/ObjectStudio/VW/VAST and 
even Smalltalk MT more or less to gain any commonly appliable knowledge. 
I have less difficulty in reading and learning. If there is a tutorial I can 
make it. For example, I can do the modeling, gui building and mapping jobs in 
ObjectStudio.

Squeak tutorials on the site you have pointed out are great. But I've tried 
them in year 2000 and found them not sufficient for solving my problems.

Your comments on re-organizing those existing materials here and there is 
wonderful and great.

In fact I have just mananged to get an adsl account and I have even created  
Squeak groups for Chinese amateurs like me. They are empty now.
I've just pick up Squeak again for several weeks. And I'm excited to have 
tried the SM this morning. There are worlds in the dark evening sky ;) to 
beginners to Squeak. Maybe the three methods you've mentioned will help point 
them out.
I would feel very lucky to translate some of them and get them organized in 
Chinese.

If it's not too boring, I even want to carry out my tiny project here, when at 
last I get it buildt with the help of the others I will organize them into a 
tutorial and translate it into Chinese.


Thank you.

(Since I didn't get this message as mail but only find it on site in archive 
so I cut and paste it here)

 
----------Copied message----------------
jim <jigme1968 at tom.com> wrote:
> What prevents me from learning Squeak(but not other dialects) is its lack of 
> tutorials. Though I understand why, it's really troublesome.

Are you aware of the Tutorials area on the swiki?  There are quite a lot
of tutorials there to help beginners.

	"Introductions to Squeak"
	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/377

If you are aware then I wonder what you are really missing.  If you are
not aware then we definitely need to update the introductory material. 
This would be a good thing to link to in the Welcome to Squeak window.

My impression has been that for years now Squeak has plenty of raw
material to help out new users.  If I wanted to try and make Squeak
easier for new users, these things look more promissing than writing
more tutorials:

	- the content and organization of the initial image
	- the organization of www.squeak.org
	- the organization of the swiki

Or if writing is what someone feels like doing, it seems more productive
to pick one area of Squeak and document it.  In particular, going
through the image and adding class comments and example methods would be
extremely helpful to new users.


-Lex




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