Squeak readable to most people on this list,
but is it to everyone?
Jecel Assumpcao Jr
jecel at merlintec.com
Wed Mar 3 21:10:25 UTC 2004
On Wednesday 03 March 2004 17:23, Aaron Lanterman wrote:
> But the claim "It is no longer necessary to write cryptic programs"
> on the www.smalltalk.org site is utter BS. Smalltalk is often
> extremely cryptic.
As you say in the subject, this varies from person to person. My
experience is that most of the population would prefer to read
Smalltalk to C, Cobol to Fortran, Pascal to Lisp and so on. Think of
the success that Hypercard once was. I will fully agree, however, that
the current generation of programmers might find Smalltalk less
readable than Java or something.
It depends in part on your previous experience and in part on learning
style and work habits. In the 1980s the big issue was
NOT ( done OR ( count>7 AND remaing=0 ))
vs
!( done || ( count>7 && remaining==0 ))
If you tend to read the program "aloud" in your head, then the first
version might be easier to understand. If you tend to parse things
visually, on the other hand, then the second version might make sense
faster.
In the Squeak system browser, try choosing "tiles" from the rightmost
button and see if that makes things better or worse for you. How about
colorPrint?
I am very interested in this subject since I defined a new syntax for
Neo Smalltalk (http://www.merlintec.com:8080/software/4) where I aim
for simplicity by making the user do most of the parsing work when
entering the source.
-- Jecel
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