2012/11/25 Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr>: just help :)
This is what I would like to get involved in. Hopefully it can benefit the project. In order of personal interest: == 1) Positioning Pharo as THE language to learn programming. With a "fun" touch. Smalltalk is still an excellent language/environment to learn programming and I think: if it can be learnt while having fun, the better! My idea is to write simple game-programming tutorials (board games, puzzles, etc. like this - http://inventwithpython.com/ - but cooler). I already started working on this, that's why I bugged you guys with Morphic questions in the past. What I would like to offer is the knowledge and tools to use Pharo as a post-Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) for creative projects (games, animations, stories, etc.). Conceptually similar to: http://www.greenfoot.org/home - only it would be it would be Smalltalk based ;-D. I also would love to write educational software (disclaimer: I'm not a school teacher or anything similar - although I imagine getting involved in the area).
From the spirit I know that maybe Squeak is more the place to go... And also that Pharo aims to be more enterprise/research oriented. I don't discard my code running in Squeak, but I just happen to find Pharo easier to use / develop in.
== 2) Writing small (but attractive/useful) sample apps ... to be useful for people/small companies and get devs hooked (return-on-investment might be low?). Examples: a TestLink clone, a time-tracker, a corporate contact-database, a room reservation system, etc. The idea is to use these apps as "troyan horses", and get devs interested in Smalltalk/Pharo (the apps would be free and open-source, to guarantee usage/adoption). Maybe to extend / customize them for their needs. Increase mind-share (I assure you, it's needed! None of my past/current colleagues knew what Smalltalk was, some confused it with Lisp). But I'm sure this won't happen without... == 3) Writing (documenting) Pharo
From an "enterprise" point of view (how can I do X, because I need this for a real-life project asap?).
I think there is a lot of work to be done here also. Documenting classes, working on external documentation. Like how to interact with OS processes/io, databases, deployment strategies, persistence strategies, how to work in a team, etc. For this I would like to collaborate in the "collaborative book". I already have a list of things that could be added/improved, and I think I would also learn a lot in the process. The only thing that worries me is me not being a native English speaker (writer). == Some work involved in these areas overlap. Ideally I would combine all three. So, these are the areas I would like to get involved in. It would be great if it could benefit the project at large :-) Best regards, Sebastian