[REQUEST] updated documentation

Graham Telfer gtelfer at po.synapse.ne.jp
Sun Nov 21 23:19:03 UTC 1999


Bijan Parsia wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Nov 1999, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:
>
> > Thanks, Stefan. I love Smalltalk and Squeak, but for some reason I
> > learn better with thorough documentation than by "tinkering under the
> > hood". [snip]

I too like to have documentation ready to hand. I'm not interested in
tinkering with Squeak. I want to write applications and know what is available
to me as a programmer: as is.

I want to be able to accept the library routines with confidence. A lot of the
post in this mailing list makes me feel uneasy about the quality of code. The
post makes Squeak appear to be like a rusty bucket; full of holes. I can't
write code for clients if I can't rely on the language.

> Just want to point out that it's a Squeakish (and Smalltalkish) philosophy
> that there *is no hood* to tinker under. That's the "transparency" goal.
> Naturally, it's not quite there yet ; [snip]

I used to write a lot of stuff in Forth. Now, there's a minimalist and
transparent  language for you! In fact it is so minimalist you are forced to
write a lot, that in other languages is taken for granted.  It leads to Forth
being accused of being a write only language and one that is not easily
maintainable because (whether you like it or not) an application becomes
bespoke.

The same thing is likely to happen in Squeak. Encouraging tinkering will
eventually lead to a fragmentation of the language into unmaintainable, write
only bespoke dialects.

> But as Kent Beck likes to say, one learns more by "reading" the *image*.
> Good smalltalking involves a high read/write ratio. [snip]

Reading and writing Smalltalk or reading Smalltalk but writing applications in
Smalltalk. There's an enormous difference between the two. Which does Kent
Beck approve of.?

So please, good documentation and accept there is a class of user who doesn't
care about Smalltalk per se but only in what can be done with it  in an object
oriented way.





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