On 2/28/12 9:11 AM, Bob Arning wrote:
> The first question is what it would mean in a Smalltalk environment. 
> His tree-drawing example seems to be more of a complete "program" 
> idiom. What would be the counterpart in Smalltalk? If you were looking 
> at a method and made some changes, when and where would you expect to 
> see the changes reflected? If the method were already being run 
> frequently (say as a #step method), then you would see the changes in 
> the World. Recompile time is negligible, of course, and one could 
> think about using sliders to change numeric bits - if you think that 
> improves the experience significantly. But what if the method is not 
> being executed already, how do you say "I've made a change, now run 
> it?" What's the context? And if you think about his tree example, that 
> would likely be a number of methods in Smalltalk, so there's not a 
> natural way to look at the source all at once.
>

Actually, it should be relatively trivial to provide a custom "folded 
method" editing pane that is indexed by the methods in the method list 
of the regular system browser. You can open individual methods or all 
methods and scroll to them manually, or click on the method name and 
scroll to it specifically.

More importantly, recompiling during slider changes could also be done 
reasonably easily, again, with a custom pane that evokes the slider when 
you click on a number. The total "liveness" of executing changes as they 
are typed might be more difficult to recreate. Perhaps typing the enter 
key...

> Of course, what does work a bit like that now is EToys. Also, 
> inspectors and explorers can often be used to tweak values of running 
> code, so the dichotomy of compile-and-run vs immediate-feedback is one 
> that has already been largely bridged.
>
Sure.  This would be a somewhat specialized tool anyway. Most 
applications don't need to record user events for playback, but again, 
one could modify the standard browser to evoke the behavior if specific 
classes and their subclasses were being edited.

Lawson
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