Musing about Smalltalk

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Tue Sep 19 22:00:20 UTC 2000


> 
> 
> By the way, for many subsystems, you really can learn them by reading
> through /usr/include/*.  I got sound working on SunOS this way, because
> I couldn't find any documentation about it.  It's just that people get
> brainwashed out of the idea, and take "libraries are black boxes" a
> little too seriously.  (Though I must admit, I'm brainwashed, too --
> looking at the headers was the last thing I tried.  Next time I'm trying
> to learn a C library, it won't be).

:) Well, I was being a bit silly with that example, although for relatively 
opaque things like MFC I don't think a beginner would have much luck.  Between 
header files and MAN pages, it's a really clunky way to learn something.

> 
> 
> There's still a difference:  in Smalltalk, you can look at the actual
> code, instead of just the headers.  And you can hit "senders of" to see
> how people use it.
> 
> -Lex

And that's precisely what I've been doing to get a leg up on Morphic.  I gotta 
confess, it's been a heckuva lot of fun!

(Programming is fun?  Blasphemy!  Well, it's been quite some time since I've 
found any kind of programming 'fun', but I've mainly been living within C++ so 
that's probably why :)






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