Where is the fun ? ([squeak-dev] Re: [ANN] A new anniversary without 3.10)

uhm not sure I got you. I will expand my thinking.

Fun is a subjective matter. For instance Circus is not fun at all to me . Same as Jazz, it's cool and entertaining, I like it but I can't say it's fun.
IMO, there is two dimensions of fun in squeak and the common point is interactivity.

That's why I see two kind of Fun in squeak.

1st FUN is playing game, in 2D,  3D, an some other interactive moments with your software (etoys, balloon, croquet in a way, speech). This is maybe what some people would like more in squeak. Is it what Alan wanted ? I'm not sure it's only about using funny programs. IMHO, It's more developing skills by interacting with educationnal soft and I would like his opinion on that point. In this respect, I really enjoy Hilaire recent works and activity (http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/). Actually, I'm not sure the fun bits like balloon, speech, even crocket respond to this educationnal objective. There are to me more programming oriented ie. more about being intrigued and then see how it works, and how to build on top of it... or from scratch once you learned. And smalltalk is just awesome in that respect as you can drill down the whole code. Just crazy to me even if time consuming/adicting. But this is related to the following point.

2nd FUN is related to programming, actually building handcrafted small stuff and undertanding how it works. I agree it's more an exercise and so it's not fun for everybody. But as I enjoyed building some electronic devices, then mechanical when I was young, programming is fun to me. My problem is that I only discovered smalltalk 5 years ago. In 86 (elementary school), I used BASIC to write some simple programs like number guessers , or just drawing rectangles on screen. My interest was obvious but where was smalltalk ;-). Then I got an atari and instead of programming I just had fun playing games. Programming languages were not accessible to me. I'm sure if had knew ST at this time, I would'nt have made mech enginering studies. Neverthless I've always liked computer as a user so I got PC's. I learned C at scool (1997) and since it was a bit of FUN, it was not real fun. I hated finding errors... boring compile cycles... so I didn't invested time in programming. I discovered Java (1999) and we did a nice project but I just didn't code a line (we were two), I was more the architect ;) and all these files and lines gave me headaches. In 2003, I discovered ST through vw (squeak just repulsed me at first glance -  the "where to start" syndrom) and I finally got to squeak once I had some smalltalk notions. Now I really like its freedom and variety (even if it really needs organisations and ergonomy). Not that this is sweet all the time, but my FUN is back, the same I had when drawing these reactangles back in 86... I can tell you I often fill like a kid :)

So what's fun ? what was Alan goal ?  I think squeak to some extend is just FUN even in the basic version for "builders". Maybe Alan expected more to develop child brain and reasoning capabilities but we cannot throw away the fact that st/squeak is just a fun programming environment who lets you learn a lot about programming (instead of just thinking)...  Probably Hilaire's work is more in line with this initial vision... but what if smalltalk had succeeded more than expected (instead of of the initial vision beiing dead).

My 2 cents,

Cédrick

ps: And the paradox is if we want more educational people develop brain catalyzing apps, then squeak need to be more coherent and user friendly for developers... As a side effect, it can also be used in production for others more mundane preoccupation like building web sites for a living...