[Newbies] Reverse Game in seven lines

David Corking lists at dcorking.com
Thu Jul 13 09:28:49 UTC 2006


(cross-post from beginners list)

On 7/11/06, Markus Gaelli <gaelli at emergent.de> wrote:
>
> Anyone tried the Etoys-Version? Someone told me that it was not
> working for him, but I did not investigate...
>
http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.emergent.de/pub/smalltalk/squeak/projects/reverse.pr

Yes - it is fun and has a lovely interface.  (I am using Linux and
Firefox - and I have a squeakland-3.8-1.noarch.rpm from
www.squeakland.org)  It is a great demo of the power of tiles and
Etoys.

I am brand new to smalltalk and Etoys, and to 'everything is an
object'.  So, I tried to teach myself something from Markus work.  My
learning anecdote is included as a p.s.

My tentative conclusion - it feels like I have a long learning curve
ahead of me - a curve of building, breaking and repairing many Etoys,
and learning the underlying development tools, before I could
confidently assist a 12 year old who wants to make his imagination
come to life on his computer screen.  I intend to embark on that
learning curve.  I hope to be surprised later when my nephew takes the
odd 'message not understood' dialog in his stride, deletes (or loses)
some of his work, and starts again in the excitement of authoring his
own multimedia product.   Do my thoughts resonate with those of you
more experienced, or is it easier than it looks to introduce tile
scripting to kids?

BTW - thanks Markus and best regards, David

p.s. my anecdote :
to teach myself a  little from Markus's Reverse Game, I click around a
bit to try to work out 1. why/how do all the buttons run the same
scripts? 2. where is the HelperStack?

In overenthusiastic clicking, I delete a ScriptStatusControl and break
the toy :( ('Message not understood' dialog whenever I click on a
number cell.)  I decide this is another learning opportunity.  A
couple of minutes clicking around and I haven't found out how to give
the broken script a new status control.  I googled aound a bit for
docs, but I know too little about Squeak to know what to ask Google.
Next I try to make a new tile script from scratch (monkey see - monkey
do)

Oops! I accidentally click on a 'send message' (! bang) button, and
Squeak goes into a busy loop.  The screen is not updating at all, and
my processsor is at 100% for 3 or 4 minutes.  Finally, my processor
load goes back to normal, but still nothing is happening in the Squeak
window.  I still don't know the answers to my first two questions.  I
have more sympathy with Chris Cunnington.



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