fwd: Modularity again

[Craig Latta]

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 at netjam.org>
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.general
References:
<OFEBD9AE84.72F7EF46-ON852571C4.005E8A39-852571C4.005FC556 at mitel.com>
<44D8D872.7000608 at gmx.de>
<D2681BEB-8DB2-486F-8F9E-33F9AA816947 at wiresong.ca>
<44D92CD6.4090409 at netjam.org>
<E151FF61-E313-43AD-B8A5-06632541E68E at wiresong.ca>
<44D98889.9040300 at netjam.org> <44D99352.2000601 at 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

***

-- 
Craig Latta
http://netjam.org/resume