> I attended the Squeak weekend in Santa Barbara. John Maloney gave a short
> talk about Morphic, which naturally led to my epiphany. Like most of the
> things that the Squeak group have done, the underlying concepts are simple.
> Of course, they are also brilliant and elegant.
> 

For me I think this is the most frustrating thing about Morphic.  What makes
makes Morphic so brilliant???  Is it how the programmer interacts with the
components?  Is it the ease with which UI's can be implemented?  Or is it
the way that users interact with components?

I trust the opinions of SqC and many of the people on this list, and they
seem (seemed?) to think that Morphic was something special, but I've never
heard why.  What was it in the talk that lead to your epiphany?  I know that
many of us on the list first saw the SmallTalk light when we encountered the
elegance of the Boolean object, so maybe we can share in your epiphany.

> Morphic is interesting for several reasons.

I suppose a list of these reasons is really what I'm looking for.

> The fact that the entire MVC
> development environment could be switched over to Morphic shows how powerful
> the underlying concepts are. From what I have seen, only the surface has
> been scratched as to the full potential of the Morphic environment.
> 
> With that said, their certainly is a disparity between the underlying
> concepts and the current implementation in terms of complexity.
> 

Maybe that's what makes it so hard for me.  I usually see Morphic only when
I'm trying to create a UI, and it just looks like a large, under documented
beast.  The complexity of the current implementation hides the underlying
concepts.

> For me, Morphic requires a bit of a paradigm shift in thinking. The
> solutions to most problems are much simpler than they appear at first
> glance. If you need some help, I'm ready. I think the real question is, what
> do you need help with, and in what form do you want the help delivered? We
> could do this on the swiki, or we can discuss it on the list, or ....
> 

If you take the discussion to the swiki, please post the url to the list.

> I have a couple of ideas of how to cover some of this material, but would
> like your input first.
> 
> Jim Benson
> 

Thanks, 

Josh