>From: "Ramon Leon" <ramon.leon at allresnet.com>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list'"<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: RE: Thoughts from an outsider
>Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:34:07 -0700
>
>I never said documentation was bad, I was simply responding to the invalid
>accusation that the Smalltalk style of self documenting code is wrong, or
>that we're copping out or lying made by JJ below...
>

It isn't the "Smalltalk style".  In the early days of open source taking off 
on
the internet everyone thought their code was "self documenting".  And that
includes C and Perl programmers!

And as I will address below, you are taking my comments to personally.

>
>Saying we could use more documentation, is quite different than saying our
>practices are wrong, or we are lying, or fooling ourselves with false
>feeling of "self documenting code".
>
>Documents mostly don't exist because there's no one writing them, this is
>after all an open source community and the people in the know are too busy
>writing code.
>
>The entire community, I'm sure, is open to accepting any documentation
>anyone feels like writing, including JJ.  But in a fast moving development
>effort, like Squeak, Seaside, and many other projects I'm sure, there's
>always going to be a lack of documentation, that's just life.
>
>This isn't some big commercial framework where you can point a finger and
>say hey, you should have written more documents.  Those kind of documents
>will naturally evolve as the frameworks settle down and start being used
>more, but don't insult the authors of such frameworks by calling them 
>liars,
>seriously, be grateful those guys are writing cool stuff for us to use,
>worry about documents later.
>
>

You take what I said too personally.  I'm not calling *you*, or Luckas or 
any
of the great developers here liars.  I am attacking this rediculous concept 
of
"self documenting code".  It became popular with the free software crowd 
early
on, but when free software companies desided to start making money, or when
project leaders wanted to hand off the project they relized the invalidity 
of the
concept.

And good, smart people adopted this idea early on.  Everyone was saying it, 
and,
after all, does anyone *like* writing documentation?  I would personally 
rather be
designing or coding.  This is the danger of the concept.  We don't want to 
document
anyway, so this is a way for us to even believe we are right in not doing 
it.

I did use strong language agaisnt the concept, but not as strong as some 
other
people much more important then myself in much more public forums.  I 
figured
some people would take it personal and get offended (I actually thought a 
lot
more would) and I wouldn't want that, but sometimes it takes strong wording
to make someone notice that something is wrong.

Anyway, sorry for offending you.  I am very greatful for all the work you 
and
everyone else has done.