Smoothing Squeak's usability barriers

stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse at free.fr
Tue May 15 20:09:44 UTC 2007


sure
we should change the menu items  and reevaluate our environment.
:)
Stef
On 15 mai 07, at 17:30, Sebastian Sastre wrote:

> Hi there,
>
>     I been thinking about the value of blogs talking daily Squeak  
> use. Squeak users/developers probably use the squeak's environment  
> in different ways according to what they do/develop. And because  
> Smalltalk was designed with the extremely valuable feature of  
> making possible to be all inteligible for one individual, that  
> sometimes could be a lonely task. That hasn't to be bad until the  
> developer starts to loose valuable experiences because of that. For  
> instance, if you are in pair programming, one developer could learn  
> about a new way to find a method faster or a different class  
> browser or a different subtle and clever way to use the browser,  
> and so on...
>
>     That subtlelties that are easily transmitted person to person  
> so meetings, BOf's and educational experiences are great to patch  
> that, but what if your profile just don't have access to that at  
> certain moment to any of those?
>
>     I think, (and I may be right or not in this) that there are  
> lots of people that fits in this profile at least for some time and  
> there is a gap on support to those people. The result of that gap  
> is clear, or the person surpass it by itself or not.
>
>     If is interesting to us that more persons can surpass that gap  
> and find the completeness of the squeak experience I think that  
> fact makes interesting to us to have vehicles (blogs are the more  
> feasible I think) with articles that friendly introduces stories of  
> developments that in fact are merely excuses to comunicate tips  
> that should be fulfilling the gap. Even when they may seem to be  
> silly for more experienced developers.
>
>     I barely imagine a newbie's frustration to understand the  
> complete cycle experience of developing with squeak because it  
> happends to me the silly thing that I dicovered yesterday the  
> preferences browser after some years of using squeak. Yes I know, I  
> wasn't reading the menu and exploring that option by myself, but  
> maybe that shouldn't be the only access to that information and  
> access to information is what I'm talking about.
>
>     Maybe universities and schools that uses Squeak are aware and  
> have taken measures about this, but I wanted to put this here "just  
> in case" and because I think that is valuable for squeak and the  
> whole smalltalk comunity that we have more bolgs that concentrates  
> the veteran squeakers virtual-environmental experiences that acts  
> as welcome and friendly "doors" to the knowledge and people can  
> have an emotionally smoother experiences surpassing the squeak/ 
> smalltalk experience gaps and knowledge barriers.
>
>     cheers,
>
> Sebastian Sastre
>
>




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