4 ms·

Nope. Virtually nobody uses Smalltalk as the first language any longer anyway, to the best of my knowledge.

e12e 13y ago
Well, I'm guessing not that many are using Pyret as a first language (yet) either... (Actually, I think a few people are still using Squeak to teach kids programming, so that's not even true)? Anyway, I was more curious if you'd done such a study because a) It's a very concise and consistent syntax, and b) with all the great work that appears to go into Pharo Smalltalk it would seem to be viable option (again). And yes, I do mean for computer science (not "just" programming): http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/petitparser-1 http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/petitparser-1 http://www.squeaksource.com/OMeta/ http://www.squeaksource.com/OMeta/ (This in addition to the nice design of Smalltalk-80 - and no, of course it isn't perfect -- is any language)
- skrishnamurthi 13y ago
  Sorry, my point was not to get into a popularity pissing match. I do believe popularity and quality are largely unrelated. What I meant is, since most people have stopped teaching with Smalltalk, it's really hard to do the kind of research I'm talking about! We had no trouble doing it for Racket because we were able to get lots of data and from it measure for statistical significance.
  - e12e 13y ago
    No worries, I understood that. I just thought you were in a great position to actually preform such a study, if you were willing to run it on a group of students :-) I can certainly understand why you wouldn't "just try Smalltalk on a class or two", though!
    - skrishnamurthi 13y ago
      Yep, that's just not feasible. It would require me to first master Smalltalk, then find suitable textbook material, figure out how to adapt it to the material I'm teaching, etc. (Eg, where are the really good intermediate-level algorithms textbooks for Smalltalk?) The list goes on. So it's really just not feasible at all.

e12e 13y ago

Well, I'm guessing not that many are using Pyret as a first language (yet) either... (Actually, I think a few people are still using Squeak to teach kids programming, so that's not even true)? Anyway, I was more curious if you'd done such a study because a) It's a very concise and consistent syntax, and b) with all the great work that appears to go into Pharo Smalltalk it would seem to be viable option (again). And yes, I do mean for computer science (not "just" programming): http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/petitparser-1 http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/petitparser-1 http://www.squeaksource.com/OMeta/ http://www.squeaksource.com/OMeta/ (This in addition to the nice design of Smalltalk-80 - and no, of course it isn't perfect -- is any language)

skrishnamurthi 13y ago
Sorry, my point was not to get into a popularity pissing match. I do believe popularity and quality are largely unrelated. What I meant is, since most people have stopped teaching with Smalltalk, it's really hard to do the kind of research I'm talking about! We had no trouble doing it for Racket because we were able to get lots of data and from it measure for statistical significance.
- e12e 13y ago
  No worries, I understood that. I just thought you were in a great position to actually preform such a study, if you were willing to run it on a group of students :-) I can certainly understand why you wouldn't "just try Smalltalk on a class or two", though!
  - skrishnamurthi 13y ago
    Yep, that's just not feasible. It would require me to first master Smalltalk, then find suitable textbook material, figure out how to adapt it to the material I'm teaching, etc. (Eg, where are the really good intermediate-level algorithms textbooks for Smalltalk?) The list goes on. So it's really just not feasible at all.