Towards a better IDE in Squeak

Trygve Reenskaug trygver at ifi.uio.no
Mon Feb 19 10:51:13 UTC 2007


This msg didn't seem to get through. My apologoes if it did.
Cheers
--Trygve
==================================================================

Hi David,
Excellent! You seem to have similar goals to my goals for the BabuUML
project.  An  up to date report on the current project state  will be a
chapter in a forthcoming book on SE research. You may find it
interesting to look at a late draft:
   http://folk.uio.no/trygver/2007/babyUML.pdf

All the best for your project
--Trygve

On 18.02.2007 20:31, David Röthlisberger wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm currently doing a PhD under the supervision of Stephane Ducasse 
> and Oscar Nierstrasz at the university of Bern, Switzerland. My main 
> research interests are in the context of Integrated Development 
> Environments (IDEs). I'm planning to work on the Squeak IDE to see how 
> the IDE of a dynamic object-oriented programming language can be 
> improved and extended.
> Especially, I want to experiment with different metaphors to browse 
> and navigate source code, with new metaphors to present static (i.e., 
> classes, methods, source code) as well as dynamic aspects (i.e., 
> objects, relationships between objects, etc.) of a program in the same 
> IDE, with new ways to modify and edit source code, etc.
> I believe that we can do more in a better way these days than what we 
> have in the current IDE in Smalltalk or in Java. I believe that the 
> IDE of the future can help the programmer to program more efficiently 
> and with less errors by giving him more insights into the program 
> being developed or by providing him with better tools and guides 
> during his daily work. I believe that what we have now as IDEs are far 
> away from what is possible to have and even far away from what we 
> actually need to be effective and efficient in our daily work. This is 
> a bit sad for Smalltalk, because a long time ago it had the best IDE, 
> but now Eclipse is getting better and better while the IDE of 
> Smalltalk / Squeak stays more or less the same. During my PhD I want 
> to see how we can get something better out of the current Squeak IDE.
>
> I write this message out of two reasons: First, I would like to know 
> if you have ideas for things that are missing in the current DIE of 
> Squeak, "things", tools, metaphors, ideas that you would like to see 
> implemented. What are your ideas of how an IDE could help you to work 
> more efficiently in your daily work? Where is the current IDE in your 
> way, where is it not good enough, what could be better? What do you 
> miss, what do you need to get a better IDE?
>
> Second, I would also like to do kind of empirical studies in the 
> future to somehow validate the effectiveness and efficiency of new 
> approaches for an IDE, hence I need subjects performing some 
> experiments in these future IDEs and I also need data about how you 
> use your IDE (e.g., how you browse source code, how and where you 
> write source code, with which tools, etc.). Will you be willing to 
> provide me with these data recorded by some non-invasive recordings 
> tools you can simply load in your image and which will then save the 
> recorded data to a file which you would then send to me? Are you also 
> willing to perform some experiments in new IDEs, e.g. trying and 
> playing with them, use them for a project of yours, etc.?
> For me it is important to know if I can motivate enough people to do a 
> serious empirical study. Without that, I would have a hard time to 
> "prove" that a new approach to e.g. navigate source code is indeed 
> useful and promising, because this is very much dependent on personal 
> feelings and impressions. Only a broader study can hence "prove" the 
> general usefulness (or uselessness) of such a new approach or metaphor.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Kind regards,
> David
>
>
>

-- 

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






More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list