Kevin --

This was the original intent for all users (but only a few like 
yourself find the process comfortable in today's system). We plan 
(and need) to make this process more understandable for a much wider 
range of users (and we could really use some help). We have various 
kinds of browsers, debuggers, inspectors and explorers, all of which 
are useful at the object level, but we don't have a browser/inspector 
for larger constructions (the equivalent of apps) -- e.g. like 
Celeste. It's largely a problem of focus and highlighting the parts 
of the nexus that are really important compared to the merely 
supporting players. It would be nice if this kind of brower were 
semiautomatically built as part of the app construction process.  It 
would be nice if there were a stronger larger structure architecture 
than just Morphic, or MVC, etc.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Alan

At 10:21 PM -0400 9/12/00, Kevin Fisher wrote:
>[ beware!  ahead lies coffee-induced speculation and musing! ]
>
>I've been polishing off my enhancements to Celeste the past couple weeks (I
>added a tabbed preferences dialog to replace the ever-growing categories menu,
>for example) and I've been noticing something rather interesting about the
>whole process.
>
>Morphic is all rather new to me so I've been winging it as I go.  The nice
>thing about Smalltalk is that I don't have to flip through any reference
>books--I can just open a browser and jump directly into any class in the
>system to see how things are done.  I learned Smalltalk from the 'purple' book
>(Goldberg et al).  I really just picked up the basics from the book...and I
>really don't need to flip back to it, at all, even for reference.  Even after
>long absences from Smalltalk (ie over a year) I've still been able to jump
>right back in.
>
>This got me thinking..to me it seems that the whole learning process with
>Smalltalk is quite different from any other language I've used.  You seem to
>learn progressively...since every class is open for inspection you CAN grow
>your knowledge and apply it simultaneously, instead of the traditional
>learn-in-chunks-and-then-apply way.  It just FEELS different...as I started
>out with Morphic I knew nothing, and yet without any textbooks or detailed
>HOWTO's I managed to figure it all out by browsing the system and trying
>things in a workspace, and in a very short time.  Outstanding!  Just try
>learning C or C++ from the headers in /usr/include and see how far you can
>get... :)  More realistically, even with a well documented online system (like
>MS Visual Studio) it is still very difficult to get up to speed on something
>like MFC without a detailed book or reference.  Not so with Smalltalk, from
>what I've experienced thus far.
>
>I dunno, maybe the coffee is getting to my brain tonight, but I just find the
>whole thought process that Smalltalk inspires to be quite remarkable.  It's
>got me thinking in a whole new way.