[Squeakfoundation]Re: Proposal for TWO official releases

[squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org]

I agree about the lack of class comments (I don't much like most other
forms of comments).
About anthropomorphizing objects -

Maarten Maartensz <maartens@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Hello Joshua,
> 
> At 09:22 20-4-02 -0400, you wrote:

> Well ... it depends. I do, and you do - but there are quite a few
> philosophers (such as Hauser or Dennett, for example) who insist that
> computers think, not as a manner of speaking, but like you and I do, if not
> as good or as slow as we are on some cognitive tasks.

I think you hit upon an important point here - I'm just reading Kinds of
Minds by Dennet and he describes three forms of explaining the behavior
of things - 
Physical explanations (because that's the effect of those bytecodes
performed sequentially, go see their definition...)
Design explanations (... it is configured with a Strategy that performs
the chosen algorithm...)
And Intentional explanations (The hashed collections grow automatically
to keep their element well spaced out).

I think when trying to explain an artefact of code, it is exactly the
two later forms that provide useful information to the student. The
Design type of explanation is useful when trying to understand how to
create such things as are being explained, and the Intentional
explanations when looking at the behavior of said object as a part of a
larger system.

The physical kinds of explanation are great when you're merely using the
artefact as an example to illustrate the underlying semantics of the
execution mechanism. Maybe having too many explanations written at the
physical level explains why there are so few software people know how to
build things up - they've only every had things explained "downwards",
if you see what I mean.

As to whether objects "really" think like us, or are only usefully
described that way for the edification of it's users, I'm not so dumb as
to walk into this alligator's pond ;-)

> Regards,
> 
> Maarten.

Daniel