Thank you everyone for your alacritous responses!
I'm finding one of the challenges in learning Smalltalk is not the syntax of the code, nor the general paradigm by which the code is implemented, but understanding the tools well enough to make things happen. I'm an experienced programmer and I'm finding that I'm having to completely rethink the way I go about my work when diddling around with this language. That's not in and of itself a bad thing - just saying I'm thankful for this mailing list :-)
David Holiday ------------------------------------------------- San Diego State University neuburge@rohan.sdsu.edu
On Jan 1, 2014, at 4:00 AM, beginners-request@lists.squeakfoundation.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Re: object instance browser? (Herbert K?nig)
- Re: object instance browser? (Chris Muller)
- Re: object instance browser? (karl ramberg)
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:50:55 +0100 From: Herbert K?nig herbertkoenig@gmx.net Subject: Re: [Newbies] object instance browser? To: beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org Message-ID: 52C2CBBF.6050801@gmx.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Merci vielmals.
Am 31.12.2013 11:27, schrieb Bert Freudenberg:
Yes, multiple ones in fact. This is a major reason working in Smalltalk feels more immediate than in other environments.
...... Great explanation scrubbed
Message: 2 Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 13:02:51 -0600 From: Chris Muller asqueaker@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Newbies] object instance browser? To: "A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic questions about Squeak." beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org Message-ID: CANzdToH+hPyJqeBqSdWLwROi5w_SbdAu_G9oWm3BgRkTqa=z9w@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Great post, I learned some new things.
On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 4:27 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
On 31.12.2013, at 08:53, David Holiday neuburge@rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:
Is there a way to browse the ecosystem of objects in a Smalltalk image?
Yes, multiple ones in fact. This is a major reason working in Smalltalk feels more immediate than in other environments.
I'm not talking about the class browser, what I'm looking for is a way to see what objects have actually been instantiated and what their state is.
The basic tool for this is called an Inspector. Whenever you have an expression, like "3 + 4", you press cmd-i to "inspect it", which opens an inspector on the result. This works in any text area. Try for example inspecting "self" in a class browser, and you will inspect the underlying class object (which the browser shows a high-level view of).
In the Inspector you see the objects referenced by this object (via instance variables or indexed fields) in the left panel. Select any of them and choose "inspect" from the context menu (or press cmd-i again). This way you can inspect all the objects in the system.
A more modern tool than the Inspector (which was around 40 years ago already) is the Object Explorer. It presents you a tree view of an object and its "children", which again are the instance variables and indexed fields of the object. Open it with cmd-shift-i (or "explore" in the context menu).
You can also do the reverse. If you choose "objects pointing to this value" you get an inspector showing all the objects that directly point to this object. Similarly there is a "reverse explorer", which you can open by selecting "explore pointers".
There are two roots to all the objects in the system:
Smalltalk specialObjectsArraywhich basically holds everything the Virtual Machine needs to know about, and in turn almost every object in the whole image, and
thisContextwhich is the current execution context, holding onto temporary objects. When a garbage collection is performed, any object not reachable form either of these two roots is removed from memory.
An "interesting" global object to explore is
Project currentwhich holds your current workspace, in particular
Project current world, the root of all morphs in the world. And of course
Smalltalkitself is the dictionary that holds all global objects, including all classes (unless they are defined in a non-global environment).
There is also a low-level way to enumerate all objects in memory. "self someObject" will return the very first object in memory (which happens to be the nil object), and "anObject nextObject" will return the next one:
| object count | count := 0. object := self someObject. [0 == object] whileFalse: [count := count + 1. object := object nextObject]. countInterestingly, this also finds objects that are due to be garbage-collected. For example, if you accidentally closed a text window, there is a good chance its contents will still be in memory, and can be retrieved using an expression like
ByteString allInstances last: 10This makes use of the someInstance/nextInstance methods, which are similar to someObject/nextObject, but restricted to instances of one class only.
Hope you have fun poking around in the world of objects :)
- Bert -
Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
Message: 3 Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2014 02:23:04 +0100 From: karl ramberg karlramberg@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Newbies] object instance browser? To: "A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic questions about Squeak." beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org Cc: David Holiday neuburge@rohan.sdsu.edu Message-ID: CAGzzWLgJCGf1AkddemfwwvsRtfaHoHO5R+mRPu5eR4ZQy+iFfw@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
I do it :-)
Happy new year!
Cheers, Karl
On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
Hey, I wrote it, you make the workspace, deal? ;)
Happy New Year, btw.
- Bert -
On 31.12.2013, at 12:37, karl ramberg karlramberg@gmail.com wrote:
Make a Welcome Workspace with this info :-)
Cheers, Karl
On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
On 31.12.2013, at 08:53, David Holiday neuburge@rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:
Is there a way to browse the ecosystem of objects in a Smalltalk image?
Yes, multiple ones in fact. This is a major reason working in Smalltalk feels more immediate than in other environments.
I'm not talking about the class browser, what I'm looking for is a way
to see what objects have actually been instantiated and what their state is.
The basic tool for this is called an Inspector. Whenever you have an expression, like "3 + 4", you press cmd-i to "inspect it", which opens an inspector on the result. This works in any text area. Try for example inspecting "self" in a class browser, and you will inspect the underlying class object (which the browser shows a high-level view of).
In the Inspector you see the objects referenced by this object (via instance variables or indexed fields) in the left panel. Select any of them and choose "inspect" from the context menu (or press cmd-i again). This way you can inspect all the objects in the system.
A more modern tool than the Inspector (which was around 40 years ago already) is the Object Explorer. It presents you a tree view of an object and its "children", which again are the instance variables and indexed fields of the object. Open it with cmd-shift-i (or "explore" in the context menu).
You can also do the reverse. If you choose "objects pointing to this value" you get an inspector showing all the objects that directly point to this object. Similarly there is a "reverse explorer", which you can open by selecting "explore pointers".
There are two roots to all the objects in the system:
Smalltalk specialObjectsArraywhich basically holds everything the Virtual Machine needs to know about, and in turn almost every object in the whole image, and
thisContextwhich is the current execution context, holding onto temporary objects. When a garbage collection is performed, any object not reachable form either of these two roots is removed from memory.
An "interesting" global object to explore is
Project currentwhich holds your current workspace, in particular
Project current world, the root of all morphs in the world. And of course
Smalltalkitself is the dictionary that holds all global objects, including all classes (unless they are defined in a non-global environment).
There is also a low-level way to enumerate all objects in memory. "self someObject" will return the very first object in memory (which happens to be the nil object), and "anObject nextObject" will return the next one:
| object count | count := 0. object := self someObject. [0 == object] whileFalse: [count := count + 1. object := object nextObject]. countInterestingly, this also finds objects that are due to be garbage-collected. For example, if you accidentally closed a text window, there is a good chance its contents will still be in memory, and can be retrieved using an expression like
ByteString allInstances last: 10This makes use of the someInstance/nextInstance methods, which are similar to someObject/nextObject, but restricted to instances of one class only.
Hope you have fun poking around in the world of objects :)
- Bert -
Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
Beginners mailing list Beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 05:04:50PM -0800, David Holiday wrote:
Thank you everyone for your alacritous responses!
I'm finding one of the challenges in learning Smalltalk is not the syntax of the code, nor the general paradigm by which the code is implemented, but understanding the tools well enough to make things happen. I'm an experienced programmer and I'm finding that I'm having to completely rethink the way I go about my work when diddling around with this language. That's not in and of itself a bad thing - just saying I'm thankful for this mailing list :-)
It does take a bit of getting used to, especially if you are an old goat like me. But it is worth the effort.
Youthful and inexperienced people say that there is really not much effort involved in learning this stuff, but I'm not personally in a position to confirm or deny that claim.
Dave
What I personally missed the most in comparison with other languages is the methods documentation. Not that we don't have tools for that (IMHO method comments are enough if they are specific enough), but there is not enough of them inside the image. What I miss is for example some information concerning the classes of the arguments of functions (or rather example classes to be exact :-P).
On 03.01.2014, at 02:36, David T. Lewis lewis@mail.msen.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 05:04:50PM -0800, David Holiday wrote:
Thank you everyone for your alacritous responses!
I'm finding one of the challenges in learning Smalltalk is not the syntax of the code, nor the general paradigm by which the code is implemented, but understanding the tools well enough to make things happen. I'm an experienced programmer and I'm finding that I'm having to completely rethink the way I go about my work when diddling around with this language. That's not in and of itself a bad thing - just saying I'm thankful for this mailing list :-)
It does take a bit of getting used to, especially if you are an old goat like me. But it is worth the effort.
Youthful and inexperienced people say that there is really not much effort involved in learning this stuff, but I'm not personally in a position to confirm or deny that claim.
Hah! You should hear students complain ;)
- Bert -
Personally I am finding Smalltalk a breath of fresh air. I cant say I was challenged to learn Squeak tools even though Squeak was the first Smalltalk I tried and few years ago, even though I have been coding for fun for 26 years , I had no idea Smalltalk existed.
I find coding too stuck to stone age, still CL coding being the most popular way to code and tools, IDE tools still to primitive for coding and languages barely change and move forward. But the "stone age" curse is dominant in area of life that money and big businesses takes a hold of. Smalltalk for me is like the "bronze age" . So as you imagine I laugh every time I hear about "modern language" or "modern tools" for coding. For me we still have a long way to go before we reach a "modern" state but Smalltalk is definitely pointing to a good direction.
Learning is a lengthy process. If you can jump to using something easily , then it means you don't have something new to learn and that is definitely a bad thing. Knowledge is everything.
-- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Re-Beginners-Digest-Vol-93-Issue-1-object-instance-bro... Sent from the Squeak - Beginners mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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kilon.alios -
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