Squeak screencasts

Hi,

A request to those doing commits to the trunk.

Is it possible to do a screen grab of the whole process and publish it in
http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/?

I find short video clips (like those done by Stephane Ducasse) much more
effective than paper descriptions.

Subbu

2009/11/18 K. K. Subramaniam <[hidden email]>:
Can you elaborate, what you mean by process?
Committing changes to trunk is done as any usual commit using MC.
You just saving a package into
MCHttpRepository
        location: 'http://source.squeak.org/trunk'
        user: ''
        password: ''

and that's all.

Or you mean creating an MC configuration for update?
I never tried it myself, but i think it is quite simple process.

> Subbu
>

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 09:11:00 pm Igor Stasenko wrote:
> > A request to those doing commits to the trunk.
> >
> > Is it possible to do a screen grab of the whole process and publish it in
> > http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/?
> >
> > I find short video clips (like those done by Stephane Ducasse) much more
> > effective than paper descriptions.
>
> Can you elaborate, what you mean by process?
Creating a changeset, editing a fix, verifying the delta and then committing it
to the trunk. The clip may be short and simple but watching it in
Documentation/ (a la Stephane Ducasse tutorials) is lot easier for budding
Squeakers in colleges than digging around in mailing lists.

Just an opportunity to update our Documentation/ web page.

Subbu

On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 23:45 +0530, K. K. Subramaniam wrote: I did something similar previously although more related to bug
reporting:

http://bugs.squeak.org/file_download.php?file_id=6&type=doc

However like Igor I'm not 100% sure what it is useful to include.  Is it
possible for you to come by #squeak on IRC and chat with me about this?
Or maybe Skype (username kencausey)?

Ken

On Thursday 19 November 2009 03:01:28 am Ken Causey wrote:
> I did something similar previously although more related to bug
> reporting:
>
> http://bugs.squeak.org/file_download.php?file_id=6&type=doc
It need not even be a tutorial. More like 'looking over the shoulder' type
recording. For someone unfamiliar with updates, minor errors like the one in
 http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2009-
August/138325.html

can be disconcerting. Please keep these in mind during screencasts.

Thanks .. Subbu

On 19.11.2009, at 17:22, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
Well, it's quite hard to foresee all the things that could possibly go wrong, and you may well never encounter them.

Anyway, here is how to submit a fix:

        http://screencast.com/t/NmM4ODE2ZjM

and here how to fix a merge conflict:

        http://screencast.com/t/ODRlNGE3N

HTH,

- Bert -

On Friday 20 November 2009 12:16:00 am Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> Anyway, here is how to submit a fix:
>
> http://screencast.com/t/NmM4ODE2ZjM
>
> and here how to fix a merge conflict:
>
> http://screencast.com/t/ODRlNGE3N
Excellent stuff! Any reason why they should not be indexed on
squeak.org/Documentation?

Visual environments like Squeak need visual docs and video/screencasts cannot
be found easily on the web. Try googling for "squeak submit fix video", for
instance.

Many steps in Squeak are simple to the point of being incredible. But the path
to simplicity is complex. Documentation/ site could help by indexing beginner
(Developer) videos/screencasts at the top level.

Subbu

>>>>> "K" == K K Subramaniam <[hidden email]> writes:

K> Visual environments like Squeak need visual docs and video/screencasts
K> cannot be found easily on the web. Try googling for "squeak submit fix
K> video", for instance.

Vimeo allows the author *and* others to both add tags to a video.
One of the many things I like about the interface.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

On 20.11.2009, at 09:00, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>
>>>>>> "K" == K K Subramaniam <[hidden email]> writes:
>
> K> Visual environments like Squeak need visual docs and video/screencasts
> K> cannot be found easily on the web. Try googling for "squeak submit fix
> K> video", for instance.
>
> Vimeo allows the author *and* others to both add tags to a video.
> One of the many things I like about the interface.

Yes yes yes all right, if I ever do a screencast again I'll try making something uploadable to vimeo or wherever. What I used was just incredibly simple and free ...

- Bert -

>>>>> "Bert" == Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> writes:

Bert> Many younger folks prefer videos to written documentation.

I don't know that you need to bring age into this. :)

What I've learned after decades of being a corporate trainer is
that people learn from three modes:

concepts: background descriptions, terminology, first principles,
building blocks

structure: fill-in-the-blank patterns, completing a portion of
the task, or the entire task

examples: working through a single specific task from front to back

People prefer different things, and at different times, for different tasks.

Screencasts are great *examples*, but they're horrible structure
or concepts.

We really need all three.  One's not *better* than the other... it just comes
at it from a different angle.

Aside: if you look at Learning Perl, you'll see that we deliberately mix up
all three... sometimes a topic is introduced "concept-first", sometimes
"structure-first", sometimes "example-first".  And it works really well.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

On 11/20/2009 1:20 PM, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

"Bert" == Bert Freudenberg [hidden email] writes:
            

Bert> Many younger folks prefer videos to written documentation.

I don't know that you need to bring age into this. :)

What I've learned after decades of being a corporate trainer is
that people learn from three modes:

concepts: background descriptions, terminology, first principles,
building blocks

structure: fill-in-the-blank patterns, completing a portion of
the task, or the entire task

examples: working through a single specific task from front to back

People prefer different things, and at different times, for different tasks.

Screencasts are great *examples*, but they're horrible structure
or concepts.

We really need all three.  One's not *better* than the other... it just comes
at it from a different angle.

Aside: if you look at Learning Perl, you'll see that we deliberately mix up
all three... sometimes a topic is introduced "concept-first", sometimes
"structure-first", sometimes "example-first".  And it works really well.

Randal is absolutely right. As a homeschooling father of many, my wife has spent time studying the variety of learning styles. In a home school environment you often have liberties that you don't always have in other environments. So you can tailor the education more to the child as necessary or desirable.

>From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles we have:

1. visual learners;
2. auditory learners;
3. reading/writing-preference learners;
4. kinesthetic learners or tactile learners

So while, I myself, prefer written communication. I do understand others have different preferences and abilities which enable them. My father who is kinesthetic to this day does not understand how I can read about something which hands on in nature and be able to then do it. He was an auto mechanic and always believed you learn by doing not reading. How can you learn to fix a car by reading a book? Pretty well actually. :)

I believe the sooner a person understands their nature and works within it as much as possible will progress and learn at their best rate. Of course we must acquire some ability to learn via the other means if necessary. Such is life.

Jimmie

Bert Freudenberg wrote

On 20.11.2009, at 09:00, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>
>>>>>> "K" == K K Subramaniam <subbukk@gmail.com> writes:
>
> K> Visual environments like Squeak need visual docs and video/screencasts
> K> cannot be found easily on the web. Try googling for "squeak submit fix
> K> video", for instance.
>
> Vimeo allows the author *and* others to both add tags to a video.
> One of the many things I like about the interface.

Yes yes yes all right, if I ever do a screencast again I'll try making something uploadable to vimeo or wherever. What I used was just incredibly simple and free ...

- Bert -

Bert, if you enable the download links for these, I'll pull a copy and post them on Vimeo.

>>>>> "Jimmie" == Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> writes:

Jimmie>     1. visual learners;
Jimmie>     2. auditory learners;
Jimmie>     3. reading/writing-preference learners;
Jimmie>     4. kinesthetic learners or tactile learners^

Yes, there's that aspect of it as well, which is orthogonal
to the items I talked about (structure vs concept vs example).

So some people might want visual examples, while others want auditory
concepts first.

In particular, I'm very non-visual (mostly auditory and kine), so my books and
writings are very non-visual as well.  I've had to learn to adapt when people
in class say "yes, but what does an array *look like* in memory", because for
me, that's something I'd never be curious about, as long as I understood
(through listening and typing) how to manipulate them.

In fact, not to get too off the subject, but it wasn't until I was 19 years
old that I had even been exposed to the fact that people can think using
visual hallucinations, or remember using visual images.  I thought everyone
talked to themselves in words in their head like I was doing to think or
remember.  And to this day, visual processing is *very* difficult for me.
Everything I do, I do with words, not pictures.  Icons that don't have
tooltips are a *real* pain for me, because I can't associate a direct thought
with an icon... I have to first try to remember the word the icon represents,
and then I can remember what that would mean.  ("Scissors?  why would
they have a pair of scissors on an action bar... oh... *cut*" repeatedly.)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

On 20.11.2009, at 23:00, Patrick wrote:
There is no option to "enable" download. These are the two video files:

http://content.screencast.com/users/Squeaker/folders/Squeak/media/f3eaa38c-92ab-4f7b-99a3-1ebb91d78537/00000001.swf?downloadOnly=true

http://content.screencast.com/users/Squeaker/folders/Squeak/media/aa6b244f-9c2d-4335-b38b-2b83253fdc9e/00000002.swf?downloadOnly=true

No idea how to convert them though.

- Bert -

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Randal L. Schwartz
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> remember.  And to this day, visual processing is *very* difficult for me.

So your visual perception is something like this [1]? ;)

(Just saw this again a few days ago after a very long time)

[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a4h_video-alex-gopher-the-child_shortfilms

>>>>> "Alexander" == Alexander Lazarević <[hidden email]> writes:

Alexander> So your visual perception is something like this [1]? ;)

More or less... that was a good metaphor.

In my world, it doesn't exist until it is named.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

I'm pretty visual, but I'd say there are only certain kinds of
concepts that are expressed well visually. I think it has to do with
what parts of the brain do what. For example, syntax/grammar is
something that the linguistic parts of the brain process "natively."
Even railroad tracks (which are a great formal visualization, and can
show me exactly how a grammar works visually) don't teach me how to
toss a language around like some good examples do. Then again, when I
was nine I couldn't wrap my head around what an array was. I asked my
uncle to explain it, and he tried twice, and I just looked really
confused. Then he drew one up on a scrap of paper and I got it right
away.

In spite of the fact that we've been doing it for longer than we can
regularly fathom, I think teaching is still a young art, and a younger
science. We still understand so little about the goop in our skulls.

I *really* dig the explorer thingie. If I'm having any trouble
grokking something I can just send it explore and then wander about
the object in a way that visually describes the internal tree
structure. I have to say: it's absolutely beautiful that folks thought
to create a computing system that was optimized for learning.

The beauty of Smalltalk is that once you've learned to fish, you have
good odds of figuring out what you need to know without asking anyone.
(I would think that if someone ever does an O'Reilly book on it, it
should have a nice fish on the cover.)

Trygve's project is very interesting to me, as a visual learner.

2009/11/22 Randal L. Schwartz <[hidden email]>:


--
Ron