gosh, you have written a master-piece. it was a pleasure to read it and to 
know that i think something like it. thank you. once more, thank you.

i have written some notes below so read them if you want.

On Thu, 22 May 2003 22:01:27 +0000, Sean Charles wrote
> On Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 07:55 PM, jan ziak wrote:
> 
> > hi. I've got a strange question: is squeak really an object oriented 
> > system
> > or it only claims it is? the point of the question is that instead of 
> > working
> > with objects, i work mostly with text.
> 
> Or are they instances of Character all organised neatly into a 
> String?!?!?! The instant your finger hits that keyboard, there is a 
> roller coaster ride of electrical activity, which results in that 
> 'key' being 'remembered' as a Character in a String in a 
> PluggableTextMorph in a Workspace/String Holder/etc in a Squeak 
> image in an OS on a computer underneath your finger. Nothing more, 
> nothing less.
> 

you have paralized my questions by talking about something other...but this 
was your aim i think.

> > the objects are in fact only in my
> > head, as a consequence of reading sources of objects which are in the
> > browser. but the objects are not tangible, i cannot see them.
> 
> I have  never dared say this! I have a huge pile of essays and 
> things I've written over the years all hanging around this sort of 
> 'thing'. If there really is a God, then surely he must be 
> 'information'. For information is everywhere, all pervasive, even if 
> we are not aware of it. I even think of breathing and gaseous 
> exchange as nothing more than information transfer. Your blood cells 
> are the ultimate packet network. My head hurts. I'm pink therefore 
> I'm S.P.A.M.

my opinion is that God is one of the categories we recognize...

> 
> >  for example,
> > let's take an instance of an OrderedCollection: this object is in fact 
> > not an
> > object but a textual representation of it, I cannot see the collection on 
> > my
> > workspace and must simulate all its behavior on my own and imagine it in 
> > my
> > head.
> I have never found a satisfactory answer as to *why* computers work. 
> Sure,  I know how they work, but *why* do they work. Anybody ever 
> read 'Goidel Escher Bach - The Eternal Golden Braid', that's the 
> closest I've ever come to finding a proof of why 2 + 2 equals four 
> but I am not sure I fully understand, being only a bear of small 
> brain. Why is the world such that I can write a program to calculate 
> how many rolls of toilet paper I need to decorate my cell and it 
> turns out to be accurate? There be magic in them there mathymatikal 
> modeles. Ye wizards are neare...

you are lucky if you think *how* computers work. anyway "why" and "how" are 
just two words so there is surely no harm if we exchange the "why" 
with "how", or whatever word with whatever other word.

i have read GEB too and must say that the impact was decisive. people who 
read that book usually end in the same way - wondering about the littlest 
things around them.

> 
> Aristotle had a the notion of a 'perfect plan' for everything. Your 
> chair you sit on started life as an idea in some designer's noggin. 
> All ideas begin 'up there' in the Intangability Zone. Then, somebody 
> takes some action and presto, a chair is presented in physical form. 
> We are physical beings, doomed to exist in a physical world yet 
> blessed with a brain and a konshusness (hey, if you can't spell, go 
> owt in steyle!) Nobody knows what makes the world tick, it's all 
> statistics apparently (otherwise known as damn lies). This is why 
> reality often falls short of the ideal. Why toast lands buttered 
> side down. Strapping it to the underneath of a cat and throwing the 
> cat out of the window is just plain cruel. And no, the cat doesn't 
> hover in mid-air as if caught in some quantum uncertainty as to land 
> upside down or not. If it survives, it just may enjoy the toast...
> 
> The front page of the Times today carried a headline saying that 
> Bhuddists hold the key to happiness, based on frontal lobe studies. 
> They *know* that nothing lasts, self is an illusion, not a 
> programming environment or a reserved word. Nothing is real, all is 
> illusory, like a straight talking politician.
> 
> My brain and my computer operate on the same principle (my computer 
> is probably more reliable long-term) which ultimately descends into 
> logico-mathematical conundrums to do with strings, quantum fields 
> and lies,  sorry, statistics. Amazing-dude-man, David Deutsch 
> (forgive me if that is spelt wrong!) and his ilk think now we might 
> be living in a 'digital' universe where the smallest incremental 
> unit is the Planck constant. Maybe that's why digital computers can 
> exist at all?
> 

i heard a professor on my university saying that he believes universe is 
discrete in its nature.

> >
> > another problem is that when i am writing the source code of an object, i 
> > do
> > not work with objects again.
> Did you ever work with them in the first place outside your head? OO 
> is a _paradigm_, a *way of thinking*. WAY OF THINKING. The code(!) 
> hard reality of our trade is just plain typing. Clacketty clack, 
> don't delete that! That's what we have to do to turn our thoughts 
> into a reality that can be manipulated by a computer.
> 

certainly.

> > i only manipulate text and imagine those
> > objects, but the objects are not on my workspace. i think that object
> > oriented programming should look like working with objects and not with 
> > text.
> Now we are getting unstable! Then you would be working with some 
> other *represenation* of objects. 3D perhaps, what about Play-Dough 
> with embedded smart chips? You design a class with Play-Dough and 
> the smart chips work out the code. (I tried this, sadly, the dough 
> is a bad conductor)
> 
> Define 'object' ?!? Try this for a reality check. Get up and look at 
> your computer screen / lcd from the other side. It's flat isn't it 
> (lcd only here!) Now sit down in front of it again. Look at all 
> those windows. Rubbish! There is *only* a collection of dots on a 
> screen, maybe only one dot at a time on a CRT. The windows 
> 'paradigm' is so strong that you actually believe you have a 
> collection of stacked planes containing visual representations of 
> some task expressable by a computer. It is _so_ strong though, maybe 
> years of TV have conditioned us to thinking that 'reality' is 
> available on a display device?

people nowadays just "pass" cinemas by. but there were times, in the 
beginnings of cinematography, when people deeply wondered about how it can be 
posible that they can see the past. philosophers have written essays 
concerning the god-like magic behind the process of filming and repetitive 
showing of the filmed. it has had something to do with time and space, their 
interaction ....

> 
> When I teach people how to program I tell them they are embarking on 
> a study of the paranormal and the black arts! It never fails to 
> maintain interest and I thoroughly believe that there is something 
> surreal about 'computer programming'. "Rule number one: a program 
> cannot exist without data" I tell them. "Sort the data out first,
>  then writing the program is easy(er)!" Is this rule not comparable 
> to "Is there life without purpose?". The parallels are frightening,
>  worthy of yet another Keanu Reeves movie at least. Maybe the Matrix 
> is the Truth. Maybe we have been 'allowed' to theorise and postulate 
> endlessly (ouch, my infinitives are hurting)  as the ultimate form 
> of mental masturbation to prevent us from awakening and discovering 
> the real truth?
> 
> >
> > so, is squeak for work with objects or with text ?
> None. Neither. Both. All of the above. Squeak presents *you* with a 
> *medium* in which you can express *intangible ideas*. Squeak lives 
> on a disk on a computer. Squeak cannot exist without a physical 
> machine. Is Squeak a meme? Are we all memes? The Smalltalk 'meme' 
> must be a good one as it is now well over thirty years old and still 
> alive and well and soon to become 'the next Java/C++' I read elsewhere.
> 
> >
> > another example: suppose that, after 3 hours of hard experimentation, i 
> > have
> > finally obtained a list of numbers which contain the results of my
> > experiments. the numbers are of great signifance to me because i am 
> > totally
> > unable to replicate them
> Easy, cut and paste, after all, you are only dealing with text! It 
> doesn't matter *how* you got those numbers, but while you have them 
> in the 'textual domain' you can easily copy them. If it's the method 
> of generation that is important then that's another matter. Why 
> can't you easily reproduce these numbers? Is it some kind of one-way 
> process, do you work at CERN by any chance?

there are cases in which i am unable to preciselly reproduce the numbers i 
have obtained. as a said it is because i am not perfect (just like anyone 
else). you never enter the same river. development as such is a 
unidirectional process, it recurs but never repeats.

> 
> > (because i do not preciselly remember how i obtained
> > them for example). let the numbers be concentrated in an instance of
> > OrderedCollection. so i have an ordered collection instance and numbers in
> > it. as next, i want to incorporate my numeric list in a source code of 
> > some
> > class.
> Into the source code of that class or into *an instance* of that class?
> 

does it matter after i have read what you have written above ....

> > wouldn't it be logical to simply insert a reference to my list into
> > the source code in places where i want to use my list object? in think 
> > that
> > the squeak system answers: "no it wouldn't. you must make a textual
> > representation of your object and ...".
> >
> 
> > so, are we working with objects or just manipulating text ?
> >
> Yes and yes.
> 

glass and glass. water and water. and and and. everything is nothing. 
(foolish, isn't it?) have we advanced ourselves?

> > giving objects names and them using those names is just one way of how to
> > interconnect those objects. i want to work with objects not with their 
> > names,
> > so why should i give names to objects anyway.
> >
> Everything needs a name. Why did your parents give you a name? Maybe 
> they just wanted to work with objects?? Names differentiate 
> instances. I'm thinking now of an Arthur C. Clarke story about 
> 'reciprocal names' but the title eludes me.
> 

names do differentiate, but spatial position does also.

> If you really want to work with *objects* then I can only recommend 
> something like Mescalin / LSD / UK tax return forms to induce a 
> higher state of being where thinking *F1* brings up an ethereal copy 
> of Don Carlos's books about mexican medicine men for guidance.
> 

thanks, but i will not try it.

> Happy head bashing. Mine's done in after that...
> 
> Sean Charles.
> 
> PS: How do you know that this list isn't a big experiment set up 
> just to fool you, laying in wait for years just for you to make that 
> post with that question?

yes, i sometimes understand it in this way also...

> 
> PPS: I hope this has been as much fun for you as it has been for me.

certainly.