Pink Plane vs Blue Plane

Bijan Parsia bparsia at email.unc.edu
Thu Feb 13 04:43:01 UTC 2003


On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

[snip]
> While the GeeMailMorph class comment is only _just_ helpful, it is also
> the only class in the Morphic-GeeMail category with _any_ useful class
> comment (the one other class that has a class comment basically says
> not to use it).

I, too, share the suffering that is puzzling out GeeMailMorph. I may have
gotten a bit further, but then again, I forgot where I went :)

[snip]
> *THIS* is the single biggest problem with Morphic and EToys: the steep
> learning curve brought about by the truly dreadful state of documentation.

Well, there's a synergy (a negative synergy). Speaking as someone who took
a few shots at documenting some of that, I find myself wanting to
categorize some methods, rewrite a few other, etc. etc., but I *really*
don't "own" that class. When documentation and code/system evolution go
hand in hand (or, worse, when that system you painstakingly figured out by
trial, error, and the grace of the list changed on you...) it gets
unmanagble and a bit demoralizing.

[snip]
> If the next paradigm shift isn't any better documented than the last
> one (Morphic, EToys) was, then BUGGER it.

Er.. from what I can tell, that *was* the next paradigm shift :)

[snip]
> *assuming* a basic knowledge of Smalltalk syntax and Collection classes,
> explaining Morphic, EToys, Tiles...  A good How-To book with *all* the
> information you need, right there in one place.  Something you can
> actually get up to speed with, without having a veteran insider as your
> teacher.

Well, I wouldn't want to write that if the Giant Morphic
DeCrufting/Traitifying/eToyification/whathaveyou goes through (or
*starts*). SOME level of system stability (or constant cash flow) is
required.

I don't have a good answer for this. I don't actually have a bad one
either. My favorite "getting into morphic" thing was Lex's little
bookmorph tutorial on the SuperSwiki. Very Joe the Box. But that does
nothing for 90% of the morphs out there, 80% of Morph UI, etc.

[snip]

I think I believe that vast quantities of Squeak will go undocumented for
the forseeable future. With Flow and Traits on the table, I'm a little
scared to try documenting stream or collection classes. Oh, the
ParseNodes. I think I wrote an article about them. Stef has them on the
block. And the Browsers. I find it a bit depressing and I *agree* they
should be revamped!

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



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