Special Note for Beginning Programmers

• Squeak (Etoys) may look like it is "just for kids", but it is very powerful.
• If you stick with this, you will learn "real programming", but in a way that is a lot of fun, without a lot of the tedium that is necessary when you use "real programming languages" like Java.
• Learning to program using Squeak allows you to focus on fundamental ideas and concepts, as opposed to having to focus on typing carefully, watching out for syntax errors and having to learn a non-intuitive computer language.
• Squeak can be used to write computer games, make computer art and multimedia presentations, animated storybooks, scientific simulations, among many other uses.
• Ultimately, you are limited only by your imagination.
• When I began writing this, there were available excellent introductory tutorials, but little followup in a principled way that focused on learning programming within Squeak (Etoys, not smalltalk... I won't say this again.) After taking the tutorials, nonprogrammers were confused about where to go, and what to do next. There are "soft" boundaries between the etoys and the underlying smalltalk, and it is hard to know what the most important features are, and what places you should not go. A main goal is to give a very structured introduction for the novice. While you're always encouraged to explore, I suggest you stick with the outline here, and don't worry about lots of features that you might stumble onto. We'll get there, eventually. Many of them are not that important. And, many of them you'll be much better able to understand via your own exploration after you've gone through the basics presented here.

Links to this Page

• A Squeaky Introduction to Programming last edited on 6 August 2005 at 8:43:17 am by 12-221-97-163.client.insightBB.com
• Concept Nuggets Listing last edited on 11 May 2005 at 1:23:16 pm by hh-1-213.flexabit.net