Hi--
Oops, another thing I forgot to CC to this list (just a few minutes ago). The discussion started on squeak-dev, and the other respondents aren't CCing the Spoon list. I apologize for any confusion.
-C
***
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: re: Modularity again Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:28:16 -0700 From: Craig Latta craig@netjam.org Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.general References: OFEBD9AE84.72F7EF46-ON852571C4.005E8A39-852571C4.005FC556@mitel.com 44D8D872.7000608@gmx.de D2681BEB-8DB2-486F-8F9E-33F9AA816947@wiresong.ca 44D92CD6.4090409@netjam.org E151FF61-E313-43AD-B8A5-06632541E68E@wiresong.ca 44D98889.9040300@netjam.org 44D99352.2000601@gmx.de
Hi Andreas--
I certainly agree that any successful modularization strategy includes ugly grunt work (I'm doing it too). But I think Andreas said more than that: that the fitness of Spoon's tools for this task can only be evaluated when the task is finished. If everyone held that view, then no one would use Spoon's tools for the task. It seems to imply that I, Craig, must disentangle the entire system before it's worth anyone else's while to use Spoon. I don't think this is true.
And I don't think it's fair to accuse me of that.
I'm not accusing you of anything, Andreas. :) I was telling my interpretation. I went on to mention that perhaps my interpretation was an exaggeration:
Perhaps I exaggerate. Perhaps disentangling some subset of the system would be suitably compelling. At any rate, I continue making modules.
***
What I said is that "if [spoon is being followed as the *only* path], I'd say that I'll answer that question once I've seen the first system that has been built that way ;-) " - with an "if" at the beginning and a smiley at the end.
Right, I got all that the first time. I still take issue with it: I think it would be better to discuss the design ideas in the meantime, in addition to evaluating artifacts.
More specifically, what I'm saying is that we should base our judgment of ideas on observable evidence rather than faith. In other words try to be a bit scientific.
Well, several of us in the Squeak community have experience with the implementation of the system, and there is a release of Spoon that implements the basis for what I'm talking about[1]. It seems to me that we are in a position to discuss the merits of the design ideas, so as to improve them. More importantly, we can decide how we want the system to work (what the "usage experience" should be), so that we have a basis for evaluating the results.
I think of this as defining a vision and pursuing it.
thanks,
-C
[1] http://ftp.squeak.org/Spoon/spoon1a12.zip
***
spoon@lists.squeakfoundation.org