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.
Indeed! Expect to hear more on pdx.st once I get hosting sorted out.
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... ;~)
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.
I'm liking the idea of a free-for-all approach. Take some generic Ruby
Quiz (the fancy Ruby-specific ones would be... interesting...) and solve
it in whatever language tickles your fancy at the time.
That way you can polish your skills in whatever language you wish, and
get a good taste of other languages at the same time.
It'd be interesting to see the same problem solved in a spread of
languages and see what kind of unique features can be brought to bear. I
can't imagine the Smalltalk and Haskell solutions would be very similar.
-Dane
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