Bijan --

I agree that this is the way it *should* be -- but, at present, the
rhetoric for running code and being able to understand how it got there --
and just what is there -- is quite different. Also, none of the browsers
are good at showing the logic of the larger "application" artifact that the
user encounters. (This is what led me/us long ago to want to have
prototypical instances as exemplars of classes, and to have an "application
browser". The latter would be greatly facilitated if there were more of a
theory for doing such. E.g. Morphic has a theory of how a morph should be
constructed, but there is still not a real Morph browser -- moreover, I
think all would agree that there could be much more of a theory for larger
useful tools, and then we could build a very nice
browser/inspector/explorer/debugger that would make crystal clear how
things are organized and used.
     This is now -- IMO -- a very pressing need. Please contribute ideas.

Cheers,

Alan

-------

At 8:14 AM -0800 11/21/99, Bijan Parsia wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Nov 1999, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Stefan. I love Smalltalk and Squeak, but for some reason I
>> learn better with thorough documentation than by "tinkering under the
>> hood". I am very happy for so many of those who can learn everything by
>> poking around inside Squeak, but I have just never made that leap,
>> myself.
>[snip]
>
>Just want to point out that it's a Squeakish (and Smalltalkish) philosophy
>that there *is no hood* to tinker under. That's the "transparency" goal.
>Naturally, it's not quite there yet ;)
>
>I recommend learning the tools (browsers, inspectors, etc.) and the spirit
>(good books include the purple book, *Best Practice Patterns*, etc.).
>Naturally, a bit documentation here can help enormously ;)
>
>But as Kent Beck likes to say, one learns more by "reading" the *image*.
>Good smalltalking involves a high read/write ratio.
>
>Note that this is *not* a rate against documentation, but really a pointer
>to alternative documentation (the system itself). It *does* take a while
>to become fluent. But I think it's a worthy goal to aim form.
>
>Cheers,
>Bijan Parsia.