Fwd: [Pharo-users] Vote for the best Smalltalk book of the last 5 years...

May be you did not realized that I wrote more squeak books than pharo ones. So what is your problems?
I do not have any and if you feel better because you have nice words against me then I'm at least useful for
something.

Stef

On Sep 7, 2010, at 10:10 AM, Andreas Raab wrote:

+1
Thanks noury. This is fun to feel bashed for trying to move and get our community more exposure.

Stef

On Sep 7, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Noury Bouraqadi wrote:

On 9/7/10, stephane ducasse <[hidden email]> wrote:
> +1
> Thanks noury. This is fun to feel bashed for trying to move and get our
> community more exposure.
>
> Stef
>


I doubt that it is fun to feel bashed, Stef. You have are doing a lot.

The actual issue was that Andreas Raab was not pleased that you did
not send the mail to other lists or at least include a note that it
should be forwarded. That's all.

Otherwise I'd like to say that you are doing great in the Pharo
community and that the books produced for Seaside for example are
excellent.

Regards
Hannes

P.S. I cannot take part on the Pharo side  for bandwith reasons and
because I like to keep old Squeak projects of mine running but I am
interested in  what you are doing. I look into the mail exchanges from
time to time. With Google mail it is easy to have a filter showing
only Squeak in the inbox but having Pharo ready to search the
archives. I download as well the releases and I am looking forward to
see the 1.2 release.

I for one am happy that there were enough books written about Smalltalk that we can have a competition.

Thank you for organizing the contest, ESUG.

Now let's spread the word and vote:

        http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q2LKKDT

In case this got lost in the unnecessary side discussion, it's open to Wednesday, Sept. 15 noon CEST.

- Bert -

(Squeak Oversight Board member, speaking for myself)

On 07/09/10 18:17, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:
This is not specific to Smalltalk. The problem is the same with every
programming language.

Regards,


--
Serge Stinckwich
UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC), Hanoi, Vietnam
Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk
http://doesnotunderstand.org/

Dear Stef,

>>> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q2LKKDT

To honor the proposal of a "votation", imho, the list should include
 a "blank" option, to let us express disconformity with all books
 about smalltalk published in the last 5 years;
 also it wolud be nice to see the option of "another not listed" (with
 posibility to edit a reference).

cheers,
Ale.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Raab" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 4:34 AM
Subject: [squeak-dev] Re: Fwd: [Pharo-users] Vote for the best Smalltalk
book of the last 5 years...

> This is not specific to Smalltalk. The problem is the same with every
> programming language.

We can't ignore evidence about people and corporations that
 tried to spread horizontally Smalltalk and failed
 during the last +30years.
It is not the same as in "programming languages".

It is a good time to start thinking in what make Smalltalk
 diferent.

Each time we make efforts to disolve peculiarities
 of Smalltalk, people choose for massive options.

--------------------------------------------------
"I always thought Smalltalk would beat Java,
 I just didn't know it would be
   called 'Ruby' when it did."
   (Kent Beck)

--------------------------------------------------

I have read this email in a local list about Ruby.
It can be a joke... or also can be that
 Kent has not understood what Smalltalk
 was and what Smalltalk is today.

all the best,
Ale.








----- Original Message -----
From: "Serge Stinckwich" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 10:32 AM
Subject: [squeak-dev] Re: [Esug-list] [Pharo-users] Vote for the best
Smalltalk book of the last 5 years...

Bert Freudenberg wrote on Tue, 7 Sep 2010 14:50:22 +0200
> I for one am happy that there were enough books written about Smalltalk
> that we can have a competition.
>
> Thank you for organizing the contest, ESUG.

I would also like to thank both ESUG for holding the contest and the
authors for their very valuable contribution to the community. While
Andreas does have a point about conflict of interest, it is unavoidable
due to the small size of our community (we had quite a bit of conflict
over this on squeak-dev last year, for example). It is like the small
town where the same guy is the sheriff, the auto repairman, the judge,
the fireman and so on.

About the list itself, I did a quick search on Amazon for "smalltalk"
and found these others:

Discovering Smalltalk (The Benjamin/Cummings Series in Object-Oriented
Software Engineering)
by Wilf Lalonde
(Paperback - Jan 17, 2008) - it seems to use Digitalk Smalltalk V, so
this is probably a new edition of an old book

Advances in Smalltalk: 14th International Smaltalk Conference, ISC 2006,
Prague, Czech Republic, September 4-8, 2006, Revised Selected Papers
(Lecture ... / Programming and Software Engineering)
by Wolfgang De Meuter
(Paperback - May 18, 2007)

Grundkurs Smalltalk - Objektorientierung von Anfang an
by Johannes Brauer
(Perfect Paperback - 2008) - in German

Einsamkeit überwinden mit der TALISUND Strategie. Neue Menschen kennen
lernen - ohne Smalltalk.
by einsamkeit-ueberwinden.org
(Paperback - Mar 30, 2010) - in German

The SICS Java Port Project: Automatic Translation of a Large Object
Oriented System from Smalltalk to Java
by Skarsaune Martin
(Paperback - Sep 15, 2008) - I would expect zero votes for this one :-)

Self-Sustaining Systems: First Workshop, S3 2008 Potsdam, Germany, May
15-16, 2008, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science /
Programming and Software Engineering)
by Robert Hirschfeld and Kim Rose
(Paperback - Nov 21, 2008)

Smalltalk Programming Language Family: Smalltalk, Squeak, Seaside, Ibm
Visualage, Scratch, Gnu Smalltalk, Visual Smalltalk Enterprise, Aida|web
by Books LLC
(Paperback - May 6, 2010)

Dialecte Smalltalk: Squeak, Pharo, Gnu Smalltalk, Scratch, Bistro,
Visualworks
by Livres Groupe
(Paperback - Aug 1, 2010) - in French

Class-Based Programming Languages: Java, C++, Python, Eiffel, Smalltalk,
Ruby, Simula, Common Lisp, Oberon, Clu, Objective-C, Squeak, Sather
by Books LLC
(Paperback - May 24, 2010)

Dynamically-Typed Programming Languages: Lisp, Perl, Python, Mumps,
Smalltalk, Ruby, Logo, Tcl, Self, Common Lisp, Objective-C, Rebol,
Squeak
by Books LLC
(Paperback - May 26, 2010)

Objektorientierte Programmiersprache: Php, Smalltalk-80, Embarcadero
Delphi, Oberon, Eiffel, Cluster, Haxe, Common Lisp, Pow!, Scratch, Lpc
by Bücher Gruppe
(Paperback - Jul 22, 2010) - in German

Langage Orienté Objet: Java, C++, Ada, Javascript, Ruby, Python,
Codegear Delphi, Smalltalk, Kylix, Objective-C, Eiffel, Perl 6, Visual T
Sharp
by Livres Groupe
(Paperback - Jul 29, 2010) - in French

Object-Oriented Programming Languages: Cobol, Java, C++, Perl, Fortran,
Python, Php, Eiffel, Smalltalk, Ruby, Blitz Basic, Turbo Pascal
by Books LLC
(Paperback - May 21, 2010)

Ruby (Programming Language): Reflection (computer science), Dynamic
programming language, Object-oriented programming language, Perl,
Smalltalk, Yukihiro ... language), Ada (programming language)
by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster
(Paperback - Oct 12, 2009)

I would say that the list is very reasonable without any of the above
books. Since I haven't read any of these nor the ones in the survey, I
won't be able to participate. But I find it great that people are still
taking the time to write new books.

-- Jecel

Serge Stinckwich wrote on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:32:46 +0700
When I started my Smalltalk computer project in Brazil back in 1984, it
was obvious to me that the English aspect of the language was going to
be a huge problem. The bulk of programs written in Basic, Pascal and
dBase were words invented by the programmers themselves and were nearly
always in their native language. Only a very short list of keywords had
to be in English and so carefully memorized. In constrast, Smalltalk-80
had a huge library and the only practical way to program in the language
was to be able to understand what a message was supposed to do from its
name rather than by memorizing each one.

Of course, all currently popular languages also have tons of libraries
so that this problem is no longer specific to Smalltalk. That doesn't
make it any less of a problem, however.

In 1984 I translated all the symbols listed in the blue book into
Portuguese. There were several pretty complicated problems and I can't
say I was too happy with my solutions, but I felt it was important to
deal with the problem. I designed a MultiSymbol class so you could type
in your sources in either English or Portuguese (and other languages in
the future) and then see in the browser whatever you liked best. That
allowed source to be shared between people using different native
languages including typing in code published in some book or magazine. A
couple of years later I actually tested this scheme in Smalltalk V and
it worked great.

It didn't handle comments, of course, and was limited to the original
libraries. As programmers added to the vocabulary the translations would
be missing. So I came up with a solution for semi-automatic translation
using the Universal Network Language. That would allow a programmer
familiar with just one native language to generate code and
documentations that could be read in any other language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Networking_Language

This is still on my "to do" list. While it might seem reasonable to
people on this list to tell others "you have to learn English if you
want to program", we are hardly a representative group.

-- Jecel

Thanks Bert!
We should make more noise and get new writers.

Stef

Am 07.09.2010 um 15:16 schrieb Jecel Assumpcao Jr.:
Remove this from your list. It's about small talk and not about Smalltalk ;-)

Regards,
Andreas

Andreas Wacknitz wrote on Tue, 7 Sep 2010 20:54:17 +0200
> Am 07.09.2010 um 15:16 schrieb Jecel Assumpcao Jr.:
> > Einsamkeit überwinden mit der TALISUND Strategie. Neue Menschen kennen
> > lernen - ohne Smalltalk.
> > by einsamkeit-ueberwinden.org
> > (Paperback - Mar 30, 2010) - in German
> >
> Remove this from your list. It's about small talk and not about Smalltalk ;-)

Yeah, there were about 30 like this, all in German. While the others
were very obvious from the pictures on the covers, I wasn't sure about
this one.

At ECOOP 95 the Self team had some fun with this by showing a fragment
from Star Trek - The Next Generation with Data trying to learn small
talk -

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Small_talk

followed by another fragment from the same series talking about "self"
being the most important idea of all.

-- Jecel

Hi Ale,

2010/9/7 Alejandro F. Reimondo <[hidden email]>:
>
>> This is not specific to Smalltalk. The problem is the same with every
>> programming language.
>
> We can't ignore evidence about people and corporations that
> tried to spread horizontally Smalltalk and failed
> during the last +30years.

Management pedagogy practices are widely ignored in open-source
communities, people here may ignore what do you mean with
horizontal/vertical learning...

> It is not the same as in "programming languages".
>

And I wonder why developers think in more in languages instead of
systems (formal education? lack of interest in GST?)
Best regards,

Hernán

Hi Noury,

2010/9/7 Noury Bouraqadi <[hidden email]>:
I should disagree. I think we need more Smalltalk mentors. Here in
Argentina almost no-one is doing mentorship in Smalltalk. What about
other countries?
The problem is that mentoring involves mastering so many things
outside the computer (psychology, pedagogy, management, etc) that I
only imagine very few of them in the world.

Some books are fine, but they are too one of the most uncommitted ways
of "teaching". If actually I would buy a Smalltalk book, I would
choose one from somebody which has mainly built real working systems
with Smalltalk and not necessarily is the god of compilers, patterns
or software engineering. The highest coding skills doesn't qualify
nobody as a true master of pedagogy, not even give you automatically
good communication or social abilities.

Hernán

:)

But normally this is what do for research... with some success and failures
and we are mentoring people too by pair programming, reading code....

Stef

On 2010/09/08 04:46, Hernán Morales Durand wrote:
GST here is Weinberg's General Systems Thinking? (as opposed to the
other gst - GNU Smalltalk)

frank

Hi Frank,

2010/9/8 Frank Shearar <[hidden email]>:
I mean "General System Theory" as coined by von Bertalanffy, although
many of the ideas were originated and associated with cyberneticists
(like Norbert Wiener). System theory explains in really interesting
ways concepts like dynamic equilibrium, self-regulation (or
homeostasis), positive and negative feedback. Their original idea was
stop attempting to understand the behavior of every element or part of
the system and start to focus in the general laws which apply directly
to systems. The explanatory model and discourse strategies has been
appropiated, reformulated and used in other areas like archeology,
biology, politics, epistemology and philosophy to name a few.

Hernán

> frank
>
>

On 9/8/10, Hernán Morales Durand <[hidden email]> wrote:
Could you please elaborate this a bit horizontal/vertical learning?
horizontal = among peers ? vertical = up and down the hierarchy?

--Hannes

You should add Diego Gomez Deck book "Programando con Smalltalk". It's in spanish so it may not be the most popular but I believe it's a very nice book (although somewhat old now).