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

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Mon May 1 08:01:13 UTC 2006


now that videos are easy to do, we should produce a massive amount of  
"code with me that application"
movie.

Stef


On 1 mai 06, at 09:03, Roel Wuyts wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As other people mentioned, getting started with Smalltalk is the  
> toughest part (unlike most scripting languages like php, where it  
> is the opposite -- try to get some real work done after an initial  
> period of wonder and everything-goes).
>
> What might help is:
> 1) (as was already mentions) : try to fix a goal. What do you want  
> to learn about first ? Morphic (then build a kind of GUI  
> application), network library (write a newsfeed client), ...
>
> 2) you might want to use tools like eCompletion or RoelTyper to  
> figure out some dependencies between classes.
>
> 3) you might want to use the StarBrowser so that you can keep some  
> of the classes that interest you in classifications. For me this  
> helps sometimes to build my own structure for understanding code.
>
>
> Note that all of these approaches are bottom-up. I second the need  
> for top-down information. What I planned to do some years back was  
> to launch the StarBrowser with some beginner classifications that  
> for example contain some of the most used collections, some Morphic  
> classes, etc.
>
> On 29 Apr 2006, at 13:55, Stephen Davies wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>
>




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