Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu> wrote:
> >  Why edit Smalltalk in emacs or vi, when
> > Smalltalk has very nice browsers already?
> 
> Because people want to? The trick I'm talking about is *not* hard to do,
> so it's not like a huge implementation burden. Thus, I'd claim, the burden
> of proof is on *you* :)
> 

They just think they want to.  :)

Really, what's so great about editting in a text editor??  It sounds
like mimcry of other successful systems.  Let's copy the good, not the
tolerable.


> Well, only for Smalltalk *scripts* eh? 

What's different about "scripts"?  Is it that they're short?  In my
previous message I did several one-line numerical calculations.  It
never occured to me that I should leave Squeak and type them into a text
file.

For a lot of quickies, there's not even a need to save the "script" for
later usage, I would think.


> In particular, it can make a lot of
> sense for short (e.g., < 20 line) jobbies or minor changes. And Squeak's
> remote tools aren't quite up to snuff (i.e., it's prolly easier for most
> folks to remotely edit a text file than use Squeak in such a
> circumstance).

I'll grant you that remote editting in Squeak isn't so great.  Still,
I'd rather download the image,  work on it locally, and then upload the
result.


The main barrier to doing little system-hacking scripts is, IMNSHO, that
most people don't have a handy image to start from.  It's a real drag if
you need regular expressions but you don't have a handy image that
includes them.

How about we make an experiment out of it?  Next time anyone is about to
write a script for their favorite OS, spend a few minutes thinking about
how you'd do it in Squeak, and then post what you decided.  Were you
successful?  If not, what was Squeak missing?


-Lex