How does a newbie get past the feeling thay he is trying to understand an elephant whilst looking through a keyhole?

Trygve Reenskaug trygver at ifi.uio.no
Sat Apr 29 15:12:13 UTC 2006


IRC??? >:-o The best way to make people shut up is to throw TLAs at them. 
(Don't you know any TLAs? Get off the line.)

I googled and found:
"There is an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel devoted to Squeak. Its name 
is #squeak (naturally!), and it's on irc.freenode.net (note their FAQ about 
IRC ... :-)

Seriously, I believe Stephen hits a sore point. I've been programming 
Smalltalk since 1978, and most code is still unreadable. I try to pick up 
programs I wrote ten years ago, and what do I find? A bunch of spaghetti 
nicely chopped into noodles. I load some package that sounds interesting, 
and get what Stephen describes so well. :'(

The most revolutionary part of Smalltalk is, IMO, the Stored Program Object 
Computer. Seen in this light, its current programming language is a 
language for microcode because it defines new operations on the objects, 
just as regular microcode defines new operations on the binary words.

We need one or more languages that lets uts describe higher level 
constructs where a program = Data + Communication + Algorithm. I have 
written an exploratory example in Java that is based on strongly 
encapsulated components. It seems to help readability, but at the cost of a 
very bureaucratic object strucure.

What does the FORTRAN of OO look like?

Cheers
--Trygve



At 15:25 29.04.2006, you wrote:
>Stephen Davies puso en su mail :
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm trying to get familiar with Squeak.  I used Smalltalk/V way back,
> > have and read and understand the Smalltalk 80 book, so it's not
> > completely new to me....
> >
> > But Squeak is so much bigger.  I'm really struggling to get an overall
> > sense of the beast - I can't see the wood for the trees and for me, at
> > least, the environment seems to contribute to that because of the
> > method-by-method interface to the code seems to make it harder to get
> > the big picture.  Methods are presented in alphabetical order, without
> > much clue as to how they relate.  Similarly for classes.
> >
> > Are there any pointers/suggestions?  I feel like I'm missing some tool
> > I don't know about.  It's great that you can see everything, but
> > understanding for me would be aided with some sort of "gradual
> > revelation"; a way to replace all the details of a class or bunch of
> > classes with conceptual documentation - showing in a screen or two the
> > overall story of that class's purpose and place in the system.  And a
> > way to dip under that to the implementation as needed.
> >
> > Any comments or suggestions for me?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Steve Davies
>I have  one.
>Decide a first project for learn "The Squeak Way".
>Try what that project was as fun and crazy one as you could, a game maybe.
>Load IRC and connect to Squeak channel and start to fire questions.
>And if size of Squeak raise havoc, I get SqueakLight in several flavours,
>including one with IRC ready to run.
>
>Edgar
>
>
>
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>Correo Yahoo!
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-- 

Trygve Reenskaug      mailto: trygver at ifi.uio.no
Morgedalsvn. 5A       http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver
N-0378 Oslo           Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27
Norway





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