Bijan Parsia wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Jerry Balzano wrote:
> 
> ...
> >  'Cause I'd be looking at a method
> > and I'd find a word I didn't understand or some such, or just say "I wonder
> > about" some other class, method, or whatnot, and go there, then say to
> > myself, "OK, that's great, (or "that's complicated" or whatever) now I'm
> > ready to resume what I was doing."
> 
> You might find the whisker browser more congenial for this sort of thing.

See http://www.mindspring.com/~dway/smalltalk/whisker.html if you want to try the Whisker browser, btw.

> > What do people think?  Is this kind of thing already available somewhere,
> > and I just missed it?  Or is there a better way of working such that
> > working that way obviates the need I'm feeling here?
> 
> I don't think that it's an unreasonable way to work. It's just never been
> enough of a problem for me (especially when I'm using this which don't
> really display well in a SystemBrowser).
> 
> Whisker really rules the day, however, when you're comparing methods or
> just peeking at one to get a sense of it in context. I don't *think* it
> has a history mechanism.

Right, Whisker doesn't have a history mechanism.  One could be added, although it probably doesn't need a history mechanism as much as a regular SystemBrowser.

> Ooo, another "history" type thing that people use is the debugger. Of
> course that's *send* and *receive* history, but that's often what you
> want for picking apart some code. If you are jumping to different classes
> trying to figure out what how a method works by "tracing" it in your head,
> fire up the debugger, which has the advantage that you're working with
> *live* code, rather than your in head simulation thereof :)
> 
> That being said, having a browse history would be interesting (but there
> are complexities...do you want to browse *every* change to the code
> pane? Only past methods? actually, the "every" change seems most rational,
> with "recent categories", "recent classes", etc. being filtered
> subsets; maybe).

Probably having a history of every code pane change would make the most sense...

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com