I had a chance to hear Alan Kay talk during a visit to HP Labs a week or so ago. Among other things, it motivated me to finally sit down and have a look at Squeak.

I'd heard Ted Kaehler and others talk about it. I have fond memories of playing with Smalltalk at various times in the past, starting when I was an undergrad at CMU. I know the folks in Extremadura include Squeak in the systems they deploy in schools, and I even came home from Malaga with a CD containing their packages! But I just hadn't ever gotten around to actually doing anything with Squeak.

Now I have... and even better, so have my kids. In fact, while I think I understand what's actually going on better, my daughter now has spent much more time playing with eToys than I have. I'm really curious to see how far she goes with this...