On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:59 AM, Francisco Ortiz Pe��aloza <patchinko@gmail.com> wrote:
I couldn't agree more with you Stef, specially with

"So each time we get down because we do not see the little flame opening in the eyes of the others

we can think hard and get from them what we missed."

Many times i try to explain or show some feature expecting that flame... that doesn't show up.��Putting expectations on others is a��a��double-edged��weapon but��I'll try harder.


On the other side, I've taught VB, Delphi, Java, Python, Ruby and Pharo. I've seen more little flames with Pharo than in any other programming ecosystem. May be I'm an eternal optimist but when you make OO newbie students get the one-click image, develop a tiny little project, debug it and share it on SqueakSource in 4 hours, that rocks.


I think that in course the show must go on, it should be like if you are a musician and you get on stage. So like musicians share good tunes and scores to create their show, we can share good kata which provides the "Ahaaaa" effect. Indeed this is what I'm trying to do with Pharocasts and it's great when you can show these katas in course.

Laurent.
��

Cheers,
Francisco

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:33 PM, <csrabak@bol.com.br> wrote:
Em 30/12/2010 19:56, St��phane Ducasse < stephane.ducasse@inria.fr > escreveu:

> Hi guys
> ��I think that over the years I ��(but also many of you, I know) tried
> to expose newbies to smalltalk or our culture. ��And often we get bad
> reactions, bad windows, ��bad colors, slow, why not ��in svn, ..... ��I

Those specific reactions are more likely to be about Squeak of Pharo
than Smalltalk in general, isn't?

> think that ��showing Smalltalk to ��newbies is the ��best we can ��do to
> ourselves, not really to attract new ��people but also to get a large
> kick in the ��%^&* because most of the time ��students are not stupid,
> they are exposed ��to other technos.

Yes. They make an excellent litmus test without the risks of expending
lots of money in the 'launching of product' which can become an Edsel
of the programming languages...

> So each time ��we believe we want
> to show ��them something cool and ��they do not really ��consider it as
> cool as we believe, we can of course think that they are idiot (some
> of them are) but ��most of the time we can also ��think that may be we
> stayed too long in our ��little boxes and the world moved (interfaced
> well ��with ��c, fast, ��cool ��frameworks, ��has ��cool tools, ��processes
> (integration...), cool ��UIs, web stuff.....).

Indeed.

> So each time ��we get
> down because ��we do not see the ��little flame opening in ��the yes of
> the others we can think hard and get from them what we missed.

I believe this is the first step to get the best direction to follow.

> ��I really ��happy to ��get exposed ��to student acid ��tests, this ��is a
> valuable feedback and I wanted to share that with you.

Stef, now comes the rub: do you think it is possible to systematize
the lessons learned and post a summary for us here?

Perhaps we should open a specific Wiki page on this?

Regards,

--
Cesar Rabak