On 7/12/06, Thomas Lockney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It sounds to me like there may be room for a couple of new groups. I suspect
there's probably enough interested parties in the Portland area to sustain
at least a semi-regular Smalltalk group -- especially considering we have at
least a couple of Smalltalk vendors with offices here.
But it would also be really cool to put together a group for general study
of different languages. I like the suggestions so far of Smalltalk, Io, etc.
I also like the idea of maybe making it a study group for different
languages. The only problem I see with that is that people might get bored
and lose interest if we are focusing on a language they already know
(ideally they'd jump in and have something to share with us) or that they
don't care about (how anyone could *not* care about learning a new language
is beyond me, but... ;~)
I was in a creative writing group a few years back. The idea behind
the group was simple: the only way you get better at writing is by
doing it. So each week we got together for a couple of hours and each
of us would read an exceprt from something we wrote during that week.
Then someone would choose an 'in class' exercise for us and we would
spend half an hour or so writing after which we would read what we had
written to the group. So we would have excercises that went like
"describe everything that passes in front of that window over there
for the next 10 minutes" or "come up with the most outrageous origins
for the teapot there on the table".
Programming is like writing: the only way to get better at it is by
doing more of it. In this case, the only way to learn a new language
is to write in it. Since we all know Ruby we could use the RubyQuiz
as inspiration. We could translate Ruby quizzes into Haskell, Io,
Scheme or Smalltalk (or whatever chosen language). We could either
all choose to do the same language at the same time, or each
individual could choose whatever language they want - there are
advantages to both approaches. But the former approach is probably
better. So for one week (or month) we could choose to focus on Io and
the next time Smalltalk, etc.
Phil
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