William -

Lately, after reading the messages from "Mr Terse" and last nights wonderful numeric anecdote, I was wondering if you all; Dan Ingals, Ted Kaehler, et al; had ever considered writing up a paper of just those kinds of tidbits for us less enlightened folks. Sort of like the AI Lab's (in?)famous Hakmem? Maybe include some of the historical bits that have been discussed recently, too?

I realize there may not be time and all, but it'd be really cool if you could. It'd make a great complement to the OOPSLA paper.

Here are my thoughts --

A lot of this stuff is parochial and not fully coherent, so I don't think it would make a good professional paper.

I don't feel we (The SqueakTeam) are the only ones in this space, so I would want it to be an open sharing among all of us Squeakers.

I agree that a collection of such anecdotes, one-liners and other explications could be a wonderful thing (to a limited audience). Taken together, and in the context of a system that you can download and play with, it could be a motivating adjunct to more conventional tutorial material.

The fact is, it is already happening. We have the mail archives, and anyone who wants to extract this kind of material could make a start on it. For me, I'll just keep writing, and you can too.

- Dan