[Cuis-dev] These strange days (and our community)

Leam Hall leamhall at gmail.com
Sun Mar 29 11:24:21 PDT 2020


Casey, thank you! That is a great encouragement.

Given the isolation everyone is currently under, and my gut feel that a 
job transition may be necessary in the next several months, I've set 
myself to earn a Ruby programming certification. In some domains, a 
certification is a key hiring factor.

I enjoyed Ken's "Why Cuis?". He has several other videos I need to 
watch, but I have to clamp down on how I spend my time. Certification 
first, exponential growth afterwards.   :)

You're right, one of the big questions was "How do I create and use a 
simple non-GUI class?" I've not done enough digging yet, but that's 
going to be one of my learning steps.

Leam



On 3/28/20 2:32 AM, Casey Ransberger via Cuis-dev wrote:
> Hello Leam,
> 
> I came to Smalltalk from Ruby and Objective-C, which both took strong 
> influences from Smalltalk-80. Making the shift to Smalltalk was hard at 
> first. I remember thinking “okay, this is cool, but where do I put my code?”
> 
> The learning curve for Smalltalk starts out rather high, which is 
> unfortunate. It’s radically different from most other programming 
> languages. The good news is, in a very short period of time, you should 
> see the difficulty fall off *stunningly* fast.
> 
> Spend some time just exploring the tools. For each tool you learn to 
> use, ever more of the system will begin to bend to your will. In my case 
> I eventually found myself thinking “you know it’d be nice to have a task 
> bar” and a few days later, with help from the community, I wrote a task 
> bar. Same thing with UI themes.
> 
> The point I want to stress is that it starts out hard, because it’s 
> rather alien, but with every new thing you learn, you amplify the 
> system’s power to explain itself to you.
> 
> Another thing that you can do is click the world menu, say “save as” to 
> save a backup copy of your working environment, and start intentionally 
> breaking things to see what happens. Like doing marine science by 
> throwing dynamite in the water and seeing what floats to the top. You 
> can always restore your working environment later to get back up and 
> running.
> 
> Ruby inherits collection methods from Smalltalk, so #collect: #reject: 
> #inject: #select: all do what you’d expect. Closures are even 
> syntactically similar.
> 
> #Ruby
> x = foo.collect() { | i |
> i.as_string()
> }
> 
> #Smalltalk
> x := foo collect: [ :i |
> i asString
> ]
> 
> If you are (as I am) particularly entertained by irresponsible 
> metaprogramming via #method_missing() in Ruby, you’ll find its analogue 
> in Smalltalk’s #doesNotUnderstand:.
> 
> As far as where to put your code, you can evaluate small expressions in 
> a Workspace window to experiment. To make something permanent, you can 
> either add it to an existing class as an extension method, or create a 
> new class. This is usually done via the System Browser, but it’s 
> possible to do this in a workspace too, or from code in a method. 
> Smalltalk is built to be maximally flexible and extensible; you’ll find 
> that nothing is impossible.
> 
> I’ve found that the Smalltalk community in general will be willing to 
> help you as long as you put in the necessary effort with regard to 
> learning enough to ask smart questions.
> 
> Hope this is helpful, sorry if I’ve gotten details wrong in the code 
> above. Working from memory.
> 
> This is a short read that I think should sum up the ideas underlying the 
> system, and should reinforce concepts you’ve picked up from Ruby:
> 
> https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html
> 
> —Casey
> 
>> On Mar 25, 2020, at 8:19 AM, Leam Hall via Cuis-dev 
>> <cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:
>>
>> Juan, et al.
>>
>> I am an Apprentice Ruby coder, and a lot of Ruby documents praise 
>> Smalltalk. They are not very subtle about suggesting an awareness of 
>> Smalltalk would help one's Ruby skills. Thus I found Cuis. I bought 
>> two Smalltalk books, "Smalltalk-80" (Goldberg) and "Smalltak Objects, 
>> and Design" (Liu).
>>
>> Unfortunately, I am not able to mentally bridge the gap between the 
>> old books and the current Cuis. I have done a lot of text based 
>> coding, even my Ruby is written in Vim and run in a shell window. Part 
>> of the difficulty is personal, I'm trying to adjust to the GUI. Sadly, 
>> I'm still trying, the learning is slow for me.   :)
>>
>> I appreciate what you and the others are doing. As I have time and 
>> understanding, I will learn more. If there is a movement to unify the 
>> Cuis and Smalltalk documentation, it might help those of us who come 
>> to this without a Computer Science background.
>>
>> Thank you for Cuis.
>>
>> Leam
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 10:55 AM Juan Vuletich via Cuis-dev 
>> <cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st <mailto:cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Folks,
>>
>>     Coronavirus is hitting hard in many places. And places not hit
>>     hard yet
>>     are getting ready for it. This has been affecting daily life for
>>     everyone. Let's keep in mind that the top priorities are to take
>>     care of
>>     ourselves and others, following orders and advice from local
>>     authorities
>>     and the WHO. Many people are facing extreme hardships, including
>>     health
>>     care and emergency workers, people who got ill and their loved ones.
>>     Let's hope it turns out to the best for them, and let's help them
>>     when
>>     possible.
>>
>>     For the rest of us, for the majority of the world, we just need to be
>>     very careful.
>>
>>     Many people are not able to work at their job or attend to school.
>>     Some
>>     of us are lucky enough to be able to keep working from our homes,
>>     almost
>>     as usual. In any case, for a lot of us (I know, we are the most lucky
>>     ones), the biggest challenge is to fight our own fear, anguish and
>>     boredom. Let's spend good time with family and friends, talking,
>>     playing
>>     games, whatever we can do without leaving our homes. Let's try to get
>>     some exercise. This is great not only for the body, but also for the
>>     mind. My wife Lucía and my daughters Sofía and Diana have been
>>     dancing
>>     to some youtube videos. I must join them next time! Some TV is OK,
>>     but
>>     too much of it is not. Get enough rest. Take some time to be calm and
>>     quiet. Meditate. Spend time learning and practicing stuff you love.
>>     Maybe we can make the most of this time by focusing on programming
>>     projects.
>>
>>     So, use Cuis. Play with Cuis. Learn with Cuis. Learn about Cuis. Feel
>>     free to share your thoughts and feelings here. We are a community.
>>     Many
>>     of us have never meet in person, but we still share a lot. We are a
>>     bunch of friends, even if it might be a little different kind of
>>     friendship.
>>
>>     Let me tell how all this is going for me.
>>
>>     In Argentina, we are in a preventive quarantine. We still don't have
>>     many cases, but we (Argentina) want to flatten the exponential growth
>>     from the start. My kids are at home, as schools are closed. The
>>     school
>>     gave them a lot of stuff to "research", so this is becoming a kind of
>>     home schooling! Lucía and I are spending time helping them with that.
>>     Fortunately, we and our larger families are all healthy. We keep in
>>     touch. We are both also doing home office for work. So we are quite
>>     busy! Our home has a nice backyard and the weather is nice, so we are
>>     able to spend time outside.
>>
>>     I spend some time doing Cuis. I know I'm being quite slow in
>>     answering
>>     email and several of you are waiting an answer on some particular
>>     topic.
>>     I apologize for this, and I promise I'll eventually get to each
>>     one of
>>     them. I have also been working a few hours over several weeks on
>>     VectorGraphics and TrueType. I have some updates to push, hopefully
>>     today, and will tell in another email.
>>
>>     Thank you all for being around, helping Cuis grow, recoding videos
>>     and
>>     spreading the word, or simply sharing this space. Everybody,
>>     please feel
>>     free to share your feelings and thoughts.
>>
>>     Cheers,
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Juan Vuletich
>>     www.cuis-smalltalk.org <http://www.cuis-smalltalk.org/>
>>     https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
>>     https://github.com/jvuletich
>>     https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
>>     @JuanVuletich
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Cuis-dev mailing list
>>     Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st <mailto:Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st>
>>     https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>>
>> -- 
>> Cuis-dev mailing list
>> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
>> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
> 
> 



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