I think a common misconception is, that (at least) Squeak is just another
Smalltalk IDE. As I see it, the goal was (still is?) to be much more than
that. With a generic (and easy to use) GUI, without different contexts for
eg. writing code or a letter. I think one manifestation of this idea is,
that we are able to write down and evaluate some code in (almost) any place
where text input is possible. Try to do that in any other mainstream IDE. We
don't need to switch to a specific Smalltalk Code View and enter code in
some special code evaluation pane where the output goes to a special console
window etcetera.

So I would say Squeak's goal wasn't (isn't?) to just make the life of code
monkeys easier.

Alex

2011/5/31 Michael Haupt <mhaupt at gmail.com>

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Andreas Wacknitz <A.Wacknitz at gmx.de>
> Date: 31 May 2011 08:18
> Subject: [Pharo-project] usability of Pharo and Squeak
> To: Pharo-project at lists.gforge.inria.fr
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have convinced a friend to take a closer look at Pharo 1.2.1 and
> Dolphin Smalltalk. He is an experienced Java developer.
> After some time he started to complain about Pharo. I was discussing
> with him and now think that he has some valid points.
>
> His biggest complaint is: "Why does Pharo always show windows at sizes
> and positions I don't want?"
> I answered him: You could set the standard window size in the class
> RealEstateAgent and furthermore you can create or change
> >>initialExtent methods in every class that is involved.
> But his answer was: Why should I do that? It's the responsibility of
> an IDE. I don't want to program elementary things of my IDE. Why is
> there no mechanism that let a user set the sizes and positions of
> windows? Netbeans and Eclipse are doing that nicely. Why isn't it
> possible in Pharo?
> After that discussion I now question my own way of using Pharo and
> Squeak. I have created some changesets that I used to file in when
> using
> a fresh image. But that seems stupid now...
>
> His second complaint was that he doesn't like the cluttered windows.
> While programming he had a lot of open windows and told me that he
> lost overview.
> Especially in Pharo he is complaining about minimized windows that are
> hard to distinguish. He better likes Dolphin with tabbed windows that
> are common in other IDE's.
>
>
> Regards
> Andreas
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20110601/3ab31b1f/attachment.htm