Ralph;

There's a lot of beauty in what you're proposing.

First, Squeak is much more than "just" a programming language, it's a
general-purpose simulation system.  While CS majors might build a career
around programming a DBMS or an accounting system, your target students may
need something to visualize cell growth, disease distribution, deforestation
rates, sales opportunities, or any of myriad other unknown and unpredictable
phenomena.  While most traditional programming languages can be utilized to
build the tools your students might need, Squeak can both build and be those
tools; a general familiarity with Squeak can offer non-CS majors
capabilities for which advanced training would be required with most other
languages.

Second, Squeak is designed from the ground up to be instantly practical;
while capable of exceptionally sophisticated processing, it is not necessary
to master a number of arcane concepts and rules before putting Squeak to
work -- elementary-level students have used it within hours (or less) of
being introduced to it.  I'd strongly suggest getting a copy of "Squeakers"
(http://www.squeakersfilm.org/) just for the sheer pleasure of seeing the
light of understanding popping on like flashbulbs in the eyes of Squeak
"newbies."  However, the film also presents details useful to any educator
and attractive to potential users at virtually any level.

Third, on a purely practical note, Squeak is cross-platform and free;
students won't have to pay for their copies, can grab a copy for every
computer they own or work with, and can instantly get a new copy from any
internet-connected computer if their own is unavailable at some point in
their careers.  And because the Squeak image ("data," loosely speaking) is
bit-identical on all platforms, they can move their work from Mac to PC to
Linux to handheld to whatever turns up tomorrow with ease.

There are many more reasons why Squeak is a good choice for non-CS students
but I think those I've given are sufficient to justify its use.

Gary Fisher



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ralph Boland" <ralphpboland at yahoo.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 5:17 PM
Subject: Teach non CS major introductory course using Squeak


Many non computer science students often do an
introductory course in computer science.
They usually learn to program in a language such as
Basic or Cobol.  A friend of mine was
a phys-ed majory and made the mistake of doing an
introductory course in Fortran
(which he passed!).

I have always thought that for such students Smalltalk
would be a MUCH better language to
learn both in terms of learning what programming is
all about
and in terms of learning something that they might
later find useful.
I am fairly new to the Morphic part of Squeak but it
suggests to me that because of Morphic,
Squeak would be the preferred version of Smalltalk to
use for such an introductory course.

Thus I wonder what other think of these opinions?

Can anyone suggest why these are particulary good/bad
ideas?

Has anyone actually used Squeak/Morphic (or even
Smalltalk)
in an introductory course in programming to non-CS
majors?

If this has been done before,  I (and others) would be
interested in getting a copy of
the class notes, slides, etc.
Who knows,  I might get a chance to teach such a
course in the future.

Ralph Boland

P.S.  I currently use yahoo mail for sending/receiving
mail and have just discovered (after a year)
that Yahoo tacks ads to the end of mail that I send
so if you see such an add at the end of this email
take it to mean that YAHOO SUCKS!






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