Ted,

I wanted you to know how helpful these hints are, and that I value them
highly.  I do not work in a Smalltalk "community", therefore I do not 
get the chance to see how other Smalltalkers wield their tools. With
this in mind, you realize how enlightening and helpful these messages
and books like Becks "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns" are.

I consider this "documentation by example" the best documentation
available. There has been a lot of talk about the state of Squeak
documentation. I say it is more than adequate. To me, the "lacking" is
in the tools and available code area. Things like the Refactoring
Browser lint  tool would be enormously valuable to both beginner and
intermediate alike.

And I would pay good money to see a video of one of the "founders" work
with a 30-100 megabyte image, and explain some daily programming tasks.
Of course, an even better alternative would be a narrated walk through.
In other words, an expert gives a little talk while manipulating a
special Squeak image while recording both the audio and computer events.
The user then plays back the image. Nothing proprietary or special, just
a few minutes of things that the expert has found useful over the years.

Oh, and while I am wishing, how about some fun code for examples instead
of the usual parsers and yaccs and stuff. For years I have read in
OOPSLA about interesting projects that I never actually  got to see in
person. For example, I would love to see Vivarium running on Squeak.
 

Thank you very much,

Jim
 
 
 
 

Ted K. wrote:

> Folks,
>         In February, I mentioned how wonderful Command-m and Command-n
> are.  Select any selector and do Command-m to see its implementors
> (Alt-m on a PC or Unix).  Select any selector and do Command-n to see
> its senders (Alt-n on a PC or Unix).  It works in any text window.
>
>         This time, I'm urging you to use two variants of the browser
> window.  In the class list pane of the browser, select a class and
> choose "spawn hierarchy".  A hierarchy browser shows all the
> superclass and subclasses of a class in the class list pane.  Very
> useful for jumping around and seeing what the class inherits.  Try it.
>
>         Another great view on code is found in the message list pane. 
> Look at any method, and choose "more..." from the menu (in the message
> list pane).  Then choose "browse method hierarchy", the top item.  It
> brings up a message list window with the current method and all
> inherited versions.  This is especially useful then the method has
> super in it, or when you can't remember the inheritance chain, or when
> you want to see how this methods is implemented more generally by a
> superclass.
>         (In the next release, this item will be called "method
> hierarchy" and will be on the first message list menu, instead of on
> its second layer.)
>
> --Ted.
>
> Ted Kaehler,   Walt Disney Imagineering, R&D
> (home) 3415 Cork Oak Way, Palo Alto, CA  94303.  voice (650) 424-1070
> http://www.webPage.com/~kaehler2/
> Give me any old Macintosh and I'll put it in a first grade classroom!