I hope this is the right place for asking amateur questions.

 Please let me introduce myself.  My name is Ed Grant.

 A little bit about my background.

 I come from mainly a COBOL mainframe background (24 years to exact,
yikes!!!). Later I started using structured programming, design and analysis
techniques with batch & online systems. These techniques were a godsend
because all I had known before was spaghetti coding techniques.

 I saw the beauty of Smalltalk back in 1996. I think I was reading the PC
Magazine.  I then went to a local technical bookstore called OPAMP in
Hollywood, CA. and bought the Goldberg/Robson book: "Smalltalk: The
Language". What a book! I still enjoy read it.

 I bought my first Smalltalk system from Digitalk (Smalltalk/V DOS) and was
amazed that I could not put down the manuals. I'm sure some of my colleagues
thought I had gone crazy because I was so excited with the beauty, clarity
and programming paradigm change. :) There was definitely a change that
happened in my thinking back then after reading about Object-Oriented
programming.  I then went on to purchase Smalltalk/V WIN and still have it.

 You can imagine how excited I was when IBM came to our company to give a
one week intro to Visual Age.

 The things that amazed me the most about Smalltalk was persistent objects
the ease with which they could be defined, and the clarity of the code. Also
the real-time interactive environment.

 When I compared and try working with C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, Visual
FoxPro to Smalltalk, I knew that something sorely was missing. They feel
awkward and unnatural. For some reason, Smalltalk just feels right.

 I have to admit that I've never written my own application in Smalltalk
yet. I've only gone through the exercises in the Smalltalk/V WIN manuals.
This was about 5 years ago back in 1996. But I have experimented using the
Smalltalk workspace and viewing the Class Hierarchy Browser.

 I've read the "Object Models" book by Peter Coad and it includes an OO
design tool but for some reason it does not run on my Win 95 and Win ME
machines.  Can anyone recommend a free UML tool?

 I will be using Squeak from mainly as a hobbyist standpoint and will be
using it write some small applications for my own business.

 I really hope my background information will help you get a small idea
about were I'm coming from when I ask questions.  I realize I carry lots of
baggage so I hope you can have some patience with me should my questions
seem off base.

 I would really like to thank Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg and all
of you for laboring and sharing Smalltalk with the world.

 Long live Smalltalk!



Okay now for a little question:

Can Squeak be made to run on a IBM Thinkpad 365E with an AMD 100 running
Windows 95 with 16MB RAM and a 800MB Harddrive?

I don't need all the fancy classes. I will be using it mainly to study and
play with Squeak. I would like to at least have the ST-80, Morphic and
Network classes.

Right now I'm running Smalltalk Express on the Think Pad.

___________________________
EdGrant.com
Lake Elsinore, CA. USA