Newbie Squeaker Introduction

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Wed Nov 23 20:20:41 UTC 2005


Hi jason

welcome :)
if you want to fix the ocr of the "Art and Science of Smalltalk" tell
what I can do to help you. Do you want the scanned version?
Do you have an OCR tool?

Stef


>
> Well, that last message didn't go so well =). Looks like my webmail  
> client
> creates the text as an html attachment (blech.. I didn't know they  
> did this).
> Let's try this again....
>
> I'm new to Squeak (only been playing around with it for 2 weeks),  
> and I
> wanted to join in on the community fun. I once read that learning  
> Smalltalk
> would change my thinking about computers, so a couple of weeks ago
> I decided to see if that was true. Now I'm just amazed at how much my
> thinking has changed, and how many things about programming just  
> suddenly
> make sense . I'm really drawn to Squeak, over other  
> implementations, for some
> reason that I can't quite put my finger on. I think it just feels  
> fun to me.
>
> However, as a new user I'm really struggling to get a grip on  
> actually using
> the language for something semi-productive. I'm a DBA and Network  
> Engineer
> by trade, but since age 12 I've loved programming. The freedom of  
> creative
> expression in code and the immediate response from the computer has  
> always
> connected with something in me. So for the past 22 years I've  
> learned as many
> languages as I could, but I'm shocked that it took me so long to  
> get to Smalltalk.
> Also (insert ego here =) I'm shocked that I'm having such a hard  
> time with it.
>
> One thing that I keep seeing around the net (and on  
> comp.lang.smalltalk) is
> that Squeak is too hard to learn because of the documentation. From my
> friendly prespective there's some truth to that, and the bulk of  
> the books and
> articles on Squeak that I've read are a bit dated (back to 2000 or  
> earlier). It
> seems that the docs are getting crusty and need of a renewal.
>
> So, to that end, I'd like to volunteer to organize the docs and  
> write some new
> tutorials for Squeak. I've registered the domain squeak- 
> mentors.org, and I'll
> be pulling together all the links that I've found for web tutorials  
> to start with.
> After that I'll start working on some mid-level tutorials (which  
> don't seem to
> exist) and class documentation (with examples) to help ease the  
> learning curve
> for others. That's my plan at this point, but I wanted to notify  
> the community
> so I'm not operating in a vaccum (and possibly doing something that  
> doesn't
> make sense). I'm open to all thoughts, ideas and advice on this  
> project.
>
> I'd also like to fix the ocr errors in the book, "Art and Science  
> of Smalltalk",
> since it's a great introduction (I ordered my own copy) to the  
> language, but
> with the errors it's a bit annoying to read online.
>
> And, I guess, that's my introduction =). Thoughts and ideas welcome.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jason Burke
>
>




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