Alan Kay – Abel, Fields and Turing Laureates Meet the Next Generation
28 September, 2013
Alan Kay Meeting the Next Generation. See the talk here: http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-friday-september-27-alan-kay/
Sad news. Most of the Smalltalk community knows all about Doug through stories shared by Alan. Some of you have been lucky enough to have met him. Much of what we know about computers was invented by some really terrific minds. Today we lost one of the best. It is amazing how far technology has progressed in such a short time. We are lucky to live in a time that still has so many of the great inventors still alive. It’s an amazing time to be standing the the shoulders of giants. Alan Kay reminds us that all of the present is not made up of all of the past. Only part of what was done back then survived and is in use today. Some of our history is better than our present. We should all take a moment and remember that past.
I couldn’t help but notice that Doug has three controls. The Mouse the keyboard and what? A function menu? A view selector? Just what is that left hand doing? I know I’ve tried to explain ctrl-c to people and even today many people have no idea that keyboard shortcuts exist. Just a thought.
http://gigaom.com/2013/07/03/doug-engelbart-american-inventor-computing-legend-passes-away/
Great Women in Technology – Dr. Cynthia Solomon
24 April, 2013
Dr. Cynthia Solomon
Cool pictures at: http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r/tasman_turtle_page.htm from bill_r
Great article on the History of Logo.
“If Seymour Papert is the Father of Educational Computing, then Cynthia Soiomon is the Mother of Educational Computing! Not only did Cynthia help create the first programming language for children, but she developed many of the pedagogical approaches and activities we still use to teach children to use computers. Forty five years later, Logo is still in use by millions of children around the world in the form of Scratch, MicroWorlds, Snap! and other dialects. The Twenty Things to Do with a Computer paper written by Solomon and Papert in 1970 or ’71 remains provocative today and lays the foundation for the maker movement sweeping the globe.”
See the full article: Time to Honor a Technology Pioneer!
Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education
Designing Multimedia Environments for Children
Wouldn’t it be fun to have the Girls For Raspberry Pi read Twenty Things to Do with a Computer 🙂
Squeak Video Tutorials, 74 and counting!
29 April, 2010
Chris Cunnington reminded the Squeak-dev mailing list that for a while now he’s been creating video tutorials explaining aspects of Squeak. In fact he’s been working at this for so long that he now has over 70 videos available!
The videos give snappy introductions to topics as varied as: using SqueakSource to download Squeak applications; the mysteries of the red, blue, and yellow mouse buttons; how to use morphs; and using Croquet to interact in 3D environments (as seen above).
If you want to learn about Squeak, or to find out more about Squeak applications you’ve never used before, these are a great resource, so head over to Chris’ Smalltalk Medicine Show channel on YouTube. If you know of other great videos for newcomers to Squeak and Smalltalk, please let us know in the comments.
New Screencasts on DrGeoII
20 August, 2008
Hilaire Fernandes has announced that he has created over 50 screencasts illustrating the capabilities of DrGeoII. DrGeoII allows students at primary or secondary level to create and interactively manipulate geometric figures within definable constraints.
It is written using Morphic in Squeak Smalltalk, and can be embedded and mixed with existing Morph elements of the Squeak environment on the OLPC XO to produce some very impressive-looking activities to help students learn about mathematics and physics. The DrGeo wiki has lots of useful advice on how to get the best from the application.
Development of Dr. Geo II was partly sponsored by TOP, the Taiwan Open Source Project, with funding from the Taiwan Ministry of Economy, and by ESUG to promote the Smalltalk language.
Avi Bryant Interview
28 July, 2008
Werner Schuster from InfoQ.com spent some time talking to Avi Bryant at QCon London 2008, and InfoQ have posted a recording of their conversation. In the interview, Avi talks about the Smalltalk web framework Seaside, DabbleDB, using Smalltalk images for persistence instead of an RDBMs, GemStone and more.
Get recording your Squeak videos now!
19 July, 2008
The Squeak mailing lists have recently seen a surge of interest in getting videos published to help explain Squeak and Smalltalk to developers coming to the language and environment for the first time.
In response to this Randal L. Schwartz has set up a new Squeak Smalltalk group on vimeo.com to allow Squeakers to easily upload and share their videos.
Videos can be a great way to help people quickly pick up a lot of complex information, which makes this an opportunity for Squeakers old and new to help promote Squeak. If there are any topics that you think would suit a short video, why not try recording one and publishing it? If you’re the developer of a powerful Squeak developer tool, and you’re amazed that no-one seems to use all of its functionality, this would be a great way to expose all of those features in a compelling way.
If you’re a new developer struggling with Squeak, let us know what topics you’d like to see covered in video tutorials. If you’ve got any recommendations for recording and editing software for Windows, Mac or Linux, please leave a comment.
Seaside: your next web framework
5 May, 2008
Randal L. Schwartz had a “standing-room only” audience at BarCampPortland for his presentation on why web developers should consider using the Seaside web application framework. BarCampPortland is described as an “unconference for the Portland [Oregon] tech community”, and aims to offer the attendees interesting topics, cool people and great networking opportunities.
Randal was offered a 45-minute slot, and took the opportunity to explain what makes Seaside such a powerful framework for professional web developers. His material, which incorporated feedback from colleagues on the Seaside mailing list, was very well received, and will form the basis for future presentations by Randal to raise the awareness of Seaside in the web development community.
New Dabble DB Demo Debuts
28 April, 2008
Avi Bryant writes at the Dabble DB blog that the team has produced a new 8-minute demo of their product in action. This new video replaces their 2006 video which was linked to so frequently that it still shows up as #4 in the google results for “the demo“.
Dabble DB is a tool to help you create, manage, interpret and present data via your browser. Written in Squeak using the Seaside web application framework, it has received glowing reviews since its launch in 2005.
Dan Ingalls demos Lively at Google
14 March, 2008
Dan Ingalls gave an interesting Tech Talk on the Lively kernel (best viewed in Safari 3 apparently) at Google a few weeks ago – what better way to (re)introduce our new board member?
The Weekly Squeak 