>On Thu, 04 Nov 1999 17:15:46   Stefan Rieken wrote:
>>
>>Sun says that their new way of describing objects is better than
>>classes. Now I have always thought that a "class" is, in the first
>>place, nothing more than a naming convention.
>>
>>Can anybody explain to me what they are talking about then? &BTW: do you
>>agree with Sun, or is this just another "dot in com" talk?
>
>Stefan,
>
>For those of us not familiar with this New
>Way of the Sun, can you recap for us?

It's not only from Sun. They call it the classless model, or the prototype
based approach.

It was adopted by Gliphix too (http://www.glyphic.com/codeworks/intro.html)
and some other sperimental projects.

I visited some web sites, now I don't remember the addresses.

They call it the post object-oriented approach.

In simple words, in Self, as far as I understand,  there are no classes,
only istances.

If you want to create a new kind of objects, you choose an object similar
to the one you want to create and modify the copy.  So, you'll have a new
kind of objects.

If you need some more istances of that kind of object, you just COPY that
one and modify the data it contains.

Try   http://self.sunlabs.com/release/Self-4.0/Tutorial/

I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that this model was invented for
the "direct programming" sake. Manipulating actual objects instead that a
class (that will create istances) is better from the cognition psichology
point of view.

It was a conference about direct programming where a Man from the Self
group, one from the Newton Script group (Apple) and one from Gliphix met
and related.

If you want I can try to retrieve these docs; I still should have them,
somewhere.

What I appreciated of the Self enviroiment too, is the outliner idea.

EVERY object, in Self, is visualized as an outliner, where you can expand
and collapse the "slots" (where a slot can be a variable, a method or a
pointer to a superobject)

This solution gives you the opportunity to perceive the objects with your
senses.

Sometimes, in Squeak, you know an object is there but you can't actually
SEE it (especially the model ones).

And this is better than having an open browser, because in the browser, if
you choose a category, you can't see the methods in all the other
categories, and you can't see the variables; in an outliner you have ALL
you need in your sight.

Also, a very nice thing I saw in ObjectStudio is  the diagram of the apps.

You choose a class and it draws a diagram showing a sort of outliners
representing the objects and some lines from one outliner to another to
another to represent logical relationship between them.

They claim it's a UML-compliant diagram; I don't know UML, so I can't say.

What I really like of that is that it can give you ISTANTLY a feel of the
whole project.

I'm not a programmer so I have difficulties in reading the code. Sometimes
I see things I don't understand, I miis some relationships.

A diagram like that would help me A LOT to find my bearings (and to learn
the sintax too).

Maybe I already wrote it in  this list, sorry if I'm repeating.

Some time ago, when I sat in front of a computer for the first time, I
didn't know what a directory was, nor a doc or an executable file; I didn't
know what launching an app could mean.

I was in front of a Macintosh, so I learned quickly. Imagine me in front of
a unix shell.

Maybe I'd still be studying man pages.

Visual solutions maybe aren't more powerful that the other ones, but they
surely make the learning curve easier.

Sorry for being so long
Adriano