Methods and Messages

Randal Schwartz on All Things Smalltalk

WIkiserver iPhone app written in Squeak Smalltalk is free (for now?)

Remarkable when it first came out, and still quite impressive, the Wikiserver iPhone app is now free. I'm not sure how long John intends to keep it free, but get it while you can. It's an entire webserver running Seaside and Pier, and a webkit client to display the pages directly on the phone, or you can connect to the server from anywhere else on the local WiFi segment.

Update: Looks like WikiserverPro for iPad is also free!

Update2: John just mentioned that both are free for 24 hours.  I presume he means all in a row. :)

Apparently, BotsInc! is in a new place

Welcome to Bots Inc! BotsInc is the environment of the book Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots. With Bots Inc you will learn how to program robots in an interactive environment. Bots Inc proposes three teaching approaches: direct command of robots, scripting robots and programming robots. The book contains 24 chapters going step by step over topics with a lot of examples. Bots Inc is fun but it is not a toy, it teaches you 100% real programming. Bots Inc is built on top of the rich open-source multimedia Squeak environment. If you are interested in programming, I suggest to have a look at our new exciting project Pharo and its companion book PharoByExample.

My goal is to explain key elementary programming concepts (such as loops, abstraction, composition, and conditionals) to novices of all ages. I believe that learning by experimenting and solving problems with fun is central to human knowledge acquisition. Therefore, I have presented programming concepts through simple but not trivial problems such as drawing golden rectangles or simulating animal behavior. The ideal reader I have in mind is an individual who wants to have fun programming. This person may be a teenager or an adult, a schoolteacher, or somebody teaching programming to children in some other organization. Such an individual does not have to be fluent in programming in any language. As a father of two young boys I also wrote this book for all the parents that want to have fun programming with their kids in a powerful interactive environment. Programming in Squeak is an interactive, fun but deep experience. The present book teaches elementary programming concepts, the following book will introduce a new fun environment and teach object-oriented programming. The second edition was released in November 2005.

via rmod.lille.inria.fr

Apparently, the link from squeak.org is pointing in the wrong place, but I also wanted to raise the visibility of this fascinating tutorial again.

Squeak joins the Software Freedom Conservancy

This is big.  The community has been working towards having the Squeak Project join the SFC for years. And we've finally finished! Through the SFC, we can avoid duplication of legal and administrative services to accept donations and deal with copyright and license issues.

Joining the SFC was also the driving force behind getting Squeak's license "squeaky clean", as part of the service provided is to defend our license, and they require due diligence before accepting that responsibility.

Now Squeak is legally clean to use, and defended, and if you're in the US, you have a much higher chance of being able to make tax-deductible donations to further the project.  We're open for business, bay-bee!

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Squeak 4.1 has been released!

Andreas Raab announced Squeak 4.1 on the squeak-dev mailing list:

Squeak 4.1 combines the license change occurring in the 4.0 release with the development work that has been going on while the relicensing process took place.

Much of the work in this release has been focused on fundamental improvements. Major achievements are the integration of Cog's closure implementation, the improved UI look and feel, the new anti-aliased fonts, the core library improvements, and the modularity advances.

This is quite an accomplishment.  Not only do we now have a clean-licensed Squeak, we also have the leading-edge version of Squeak on which future development can be based!

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