[Edu-sig] Freedom: some Smalltalk history and Python implications

[Andreas Raab]

kirby urner wrote:
> So I was wondering if my curriculum could be implemented in
> Squeakland, starting from simple sequence generators (triangular and
> tetrahedral numbers) and moving up, step by step, to the associated
> computer graphics.

Is your curriculum available online somewhere? I'd be very interested in 
finding out what parts could be done easily and what parts could not. We 
have been talking for a while now to step up the age group a little and 
it sounds as if this may make an interesting case study.

> I don't want to get involved in a bait and switch situation, where the
> Squeak people lead me on to expect I can write the rule for 1, 12, 42,
> 92... but then when it comes time to make the balls actually appear
> (as in POV-Ray, VRML, VPython, Panda3D or whatever), that suddenly I
> have to switch to a different SmallTalk.

Ah, I see. No you wouldn't do that. Once you'd learn a little more about 
the differences you'd give up the idea of switching between Smalltalk 
variants pretty quickly. They are way to different even in their 
syntactical aspects (just compare class definitions between VisualWorks 
and Squeak which are the closest two of the pack).

> I realize Paul isn't just on edu-sig to answer my questions as a gnu
> math teacher.  I just want to be clear that I'm (a) doing work in the
> field and (b) have to remain at a practical level (I have real
> students at Portland State).  PataPata doesn't solve any problem I
> happen to be working on at the moment.

Can't speak for the latter but I fully realize and value the former. In 
fact that's why I was asking to begin with - I'm always interested in 
feedback from people who are actively working in the field and your note 
sounded as if it might point to something that is relevant for us. What 
I'm taking away from the above is that we're probably doing a poor job 
in managing the expectations for what "Smalltalk" means. I'm not 
surprised, but it's a useful reminder about how people look at these terms.

Cheers,
   - Andreas