On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:45:02 -0400, <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:

> "SmallSqueak" <smallsqueak at rogers.com> wrote:
>> > I see it. Thanks. Very cool. Looks a ways off, tho'. (When done, it'll
>> > bring Squeak into the--uh--'90s<s>.)
>>
>>     I think this is a little bit exaggerated isn't it, is it really that
>> cool ?
>
> I don't know of anything in any decade that is like Tweak.  Maybe its
> looks are 90's (I wouldn't know), but the way it is organized and the
> way it is programmed are different from anything I have heard of.

I was referring primarily to the UI  
painter/inspector/ultimate-2-way-code-editor design. (I assume the goal is  
a two-way code editor.) This is what made Visual Basic such a huge success  
ca. 1992(?), and which can be seen in most of the modern programming  
environments from Alpha 5 to, uh, hell the first one I used, I think was  
Visual Age Smalltalk (back in '93?).

While this paradgim sort of exists in morphic, the environment is fairly  
unhelpful. Very free, but not very helpful. (I think it was Stravinsky who  
said that complete freedom was the bane of art.) Alan said there were  
thousands of kids who had learned using eToys; I wonder how many went on  
to apply the skills they learned there to non-eToy environments? (I  
started with Basic, which well and truly sucked, but which gave me a huge  
appreciation for the capabilities I saw in PL/I, Pascal and Smalltalk when  
I saw them.)

Anyway, Tweak looks like it's heading toward a lot of the capabilities  
seen in these '90s era tools, but with solid design choices behind it.  
(Visual Basic is very haphazard for example; and it's a struggle to do MVC  
in Delphi.) So, tongue-was-in-cheek, at least partly, with my comment.