Good, thorough Smalltalk reference

Trygve Reenskaug trygver at ifi.uio.no
Wed Jan 18 10:56:58 UTC 2006


At 21:14 17.01.2006, tim wrote:
>I agree entirely that good training material, tutorials and so on are
>vauluable documentation. So is pre-implementation doc explaining what
>the original intent was; I find it rather useful as a way to know
>when I'm finished and can bill the customer for one thing.
>
>However, the original post was about *references for the classes*.
>That's a very different thing in a dynamic environment. I stand by my
>assertion that such doc should be a part of the system, included in
>the class and method sources. ...

I agree wholeheartedly that the doc should be part of the system. 
Preferably, the program should be self-documenting.

Brains clearly differ. To me, the class browser is OK when I stuudy toy 
systems, but it is inadequate when I try to understand significant, complex 
systems. My brain just cannot bridge the chasm between class and method 
source code on the one hand and the objects and their interactions at run 
time. I believe I need code that is higher level than the class & method.

I have just completed my initial submission for an invited "expert voice" 
article for the Springer Journal on Software System Modelling:
The BabyUML Discipline of Programming
where A Program = Data + Communication + Algorithms
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/2006/SoSyM/trygveDiscipline.pdf

BabyUML is a multi-paradigm approach where I
1)  separate the object space recursively into components; each component 
is an object that encapsulates its member objects. (Tweak!?)
2)  delare a conceptual schema for the member objects as a UML class diagram
3)  code the member object interaction with a sequence diagram for each 
provided operation.
4)  link the roles of the interactions to member objects with queries on 
the conceptual schema.
5)  code the internal behavior of the member objects with classes & methods 
in the usual way.

Complicated? Possibly. But I only intend to apply it when I must have it to 
master complex systems.

I have been in "writing mode" for quite some time now. I hope to return to 
"coding mode" quite soon. The goal is to make something that other people 
can play with.

All the best
--Trygve


-- 

Trygve Reenskaug      mailto: trygver at ifi.uio.no
Morgedalsvn. 5A       http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver
N-0378 Oslo           Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27
Norway

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