How does a newbie get past the feeling thay he is trying to
understand an elephant whilst looking through a keyhole?
Chris Muller
chris at funkyobjects.org
Tue May 2 18:59:50 UTC 2006
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----- Original Message ----
From: stéphane ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch>
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2006 6:03:09 AM
Subject: Re: How does a newbie get past the feeling thay he is trying to understand an elephant whilst looking through a keyhole?
On 1 mai 06, at 17:36, Chris Muller wrote:
> I would like to add the Tracing Messages Browser to this list.
> This browser is great for browsing the flow of code that cuts
> across classes in various packages. You end up with a single
> window showing the flow of execution instead of 57 windows.
Where is that browser?
Stef
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Roel Wuyts <Roel.Wuyts at ulb.ac.be>
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <squeak-
> dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Monday, May 1, 2006 2:05:09 AM
> Subject: Re: How does a newbie get past the feeling thay he is
> trying to understand an elephant whilst looking through a keyhole?
>
> Hello,
>
> As other people mentioned, getting started with Smalltalk is the
> toughest part (unlike most scripting languages like php, where it is
> the opposite -- try to get some real work done after an initial
> period of wonder and everything-goes).
>
> What might help is:
> 1) (as was already mentions) : try to fix a goal. What do you want to
> learn about first ? Morphic (then build a kind of GUI application),
> network library (write a newsfeed client), ...
>
> 2) you might want to use tools like eCompletion or RoelTyper to
> figure out some dependencies between classes.
>
> 3) you might want to use the StarBrowser so that you can keep some of
> the classes that interest you in classifications. For me this helps
> sometimes to build my own structure for understanding code.
>
>
> Note that all of these approaches are bottom-up. I second the need
> for top-down information. What I planned to do some years back was to
> launch the StarBrowser with some beginner classifications that for
> example contain some of the most used collections, some Morphic
> classes, etc.
>
> On 29 Apr 2006, at 13:55, Stephen Davies wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm trying to get familiar with Squeak. I used Smalltalk/V way back,
>> have and read and understand the Smalltalk 80 book, so it's not
>> completely new to me....
>>
>> But Squeak is so much bigger. I'm really struggling to get an
>> overall
>> sense of the beast - I can't see the wood for the trees and for
>> me, at
>> least, the environment seems to contribute to that because of the
>> method-by-method interface to the code seems to make it harder to get
>> the big picture. Methods are presented in alphabetical order,
>> without
>> much clue as to how they relate. Similarly for classes.
>>
>> Are there any pointers/suggestions? I feel like I'm missing some
>> tool
>> I don't know about. It's great that you can see everything, but
>> understanding for me would be aided with some sort of "gradual
>> revelation"; a way to replace all the details of a class or bunch of
>> classes with conceptual documentation - showing in a screen or two
>> the
>> overall story of that class's purpose and place in the system. And a
>> way to dip under that to the implementation as needed.
>>
>> Any comments or suggestions for me?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Steve Davies
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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