[Seaside] Why seaside really sucks! COMMMMMMMENTS are MISSING

Fri Apr 6 17:45:27 UTC 2007

Steph you're right but could be good that you also explain that beside a
Seaside dyagnosys is a dyagnosys for symptoms of unfriendly "uneducative"
anti-pattern not uncommon in our community.
I think we have responsibility to "work" this by helping to introduce
alternatives to those anti-patterns(*) and "best educative practices in
Smalltalk" and the related "profilaxy of the uneducative anti-patterns in
Smalltalk" for us all and not only on Seaside.

I love criticism is a very healthy thing. A tool for real progress. But one
must focus on efforts and results.

So Seaside's results don't suck. Documentation (the lak of it) does. All
un-human cryptic codification sucks. Smalltalk has a really great, great
chance to prevent that. 

I imagine that your intention "behind the scenes" is this and you want to
take some attention with your comments. Is a valid thecnique of creating
some apparently controversial subject to awake people. I agree with you in
that.

And because of that it's also a chance to give two minutes of reflection
about the value of seeing the code one make and uses as a chance of
educating perhaps anonymously someone who will read that piece of software
somwhere in time. Smalltalk has pieces of code that remains for years.
Others technologies are a lot more volatile than that.

And as I see is not just "to comment" is to undestand that one can use the
comment as an oportunity to donate glimpses of your experience doing it. An
oportunity to express it in the most didactic way you can archieve at that
moment of glimpse you managed to build up and in which you have apprehension
of something. You have created an "apprehension field".

I you leave a mark of that apprehension field you are assisting someone to
reproduce that field and perhaps helping to archieve it's own apprehension.
That will save him/her time, misunderstandings, misleadings and for the same
price, in case you forget a detail, it can save it to yourself in the future
too.

That unegoistical attitude would be of precious value. Is not utopic is
practical and archivable. Often some self-criticism. That could be reflected
on the prosperity of the system you are working on. The price? 15 seconds
for method and some typing and redacting? That is an investiment that will
return to you in the form of more people understanding what you do and how
it works. People that could surpass learning smalltalk frustrations and will
reach a point in which they'll start to give it's part adding strenght to
our community that you will surely need to consult in subjects not familiar
to you.

I wanted to express that I think that the key to the change we need is to
adopt thecniques which pruposes sistematical donation of didactic clues
about the apprehension moments we experiment using Smalltalk. 

That is what one could call programing for persons and not computers and in
my modest opinion one of the most valuable and subtle things that the spirit
of Smalltalk has to offer.

Regards,

Sebastian Sastre

(*) I want to put emphasys in all the anti-patterns that are not related to
programming (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern) But more than
the basic reference I'm giving here, I want to put emphasys in the concept
of our community's own creative anti-patterns.

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] En nombre 
> de stephane ducasse
> Enviado el: Jueves, 05 de Abril de 2007 17:32
> Para: Seaside - general discussion
> Asunto: [Seaside] Why seaside really sucks! COMMMMMMMENTS are MISSING
> 
> This is not easy for me to say that because I appreciate the 
> work of Avi, Lukas and Philippe.
> But I'm sorry to say that but seaside sucks! Not because of 
> the code or the concepts.
> But because there is really not enough comments. Really! It 
> is really difficult to understand a simple method is doing 
> and if it makes sense to specialize it.
> 
> This is TERRIBLE since I think that I'm a good programmer but 
> seaside code prevents me to be fully efficient. I have to 
> guess try and error and guess again. I have to ask stupid 
> questions to the mailing-list while I would prefer to use it 
> for  interesting questions. I think that seaside goes even 
> against the philosophy of Smalltalk (a system that someone 
> alone can understand) because this total lacks of comments is 
> TRAPPING me. I cannot use my skills full speed. Thanks what a 
> great feeling.
> pleaseeeeeee do not tell me to read the code or to use 
> senders! This is really the worse answer I can get.
> I always hated this kind of answer on smalltalk forums.
> 
> (Please do not ask me what I'm doing to improve the situation 
> because people knows what I did for seaside and Smalltalk already.)
> 
> I think that as a community we should do something especially 
> since we have monticello and comments could be easily merged.
> 
> I pushed a lot seaside and I'm trying to push it again 
> further but come on we should WAKE UP!
> I would really like that people with knowledge helps 
> improving the situation.
> 
> So if you think that seaside is cool and it is worth more, 
> spend 30 min of your precious time and add comments, help 
> lukas and the other to make Seaside really a habitable piece of code.
> 
> Comments are for people that do not know or remember. So if 
> you really want to make the community grow you know what you 
> should do. But may be it is better that seaside stays a cool 
> program for a nice and private club after all.
> 
> Stef
> 
> PS: I should say that filelibrary is a good start at 
> documenting a functionality. May be adding method comments 
> would help there too.
> 
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