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