On Jan 31, 2008 10:51 PM, Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> wrote:
>
> That was never my suggestion. In fact, the set of code items in question
> is going to be split among classes, and isn't necessarily going to embrace
> entire classes. I suspect variants in here--some folks are going to favor
> a LIFO type stack, while others might prefer an alphabetic arrangement.

In that case, it sounds like we're on the same page.  I'm all for
improvement.  I just hate oversimplified solutions that may actually
make things worse (which doesn't sound like what you're suggesting).

> That's where Smalltalk, being a non-source-file-based system can shine.

Agreed.
> Would require going to the mouse and waiting for the tooltip to pop-up.
> We're talking fractions of a second here. Another study I recall reading
> was the effect of lag on programmer producivity. A half-second was all it
> took to break concentration. At 2 seconds, the programmer has left the
> building.<s>

Fair point.  What about having a sort of "context view" off to the
side that shows all the methods referenced in by the current method?
You could even have a setting to say how far out to fan (i.e. 2 levels
shows all methods used in the current method, and all their methods).
Of course we would first need a way to filter what would show up in
such a context window, so we don't get flooded by non-project code.

> Now...off to implementation.... Heh.

Are you really implementing?  I suppose you could use some of that
nice free labor (students) to get something developed. :)