[squeak-dev] Re: "Code bubbles" - a prototype IDE

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Sun Aug 31 17:32:37 UTC 2014


On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean at clipperadams.com> wrote:
> Frank Shearar-3 wrote
>> one can
>> realise that it usually takes 30 years for ideas to actually start
>> being applied
>
> +100. Very insightful and powerful. This is just the way the new ideas work.

-100.  This is not a new idea, and the way they implemented it is not
powerful because the amount of screen real-estate consumed makes it
cumbersome and leads to information overload.

In fact, many years ago, I tried doing exactly this in Squeak for a
couple of days.  SystemWindows are just Morphs, and the Connectors
package allows any Morphs to be connected.  I made something where
spawning additional browsers would connect to the browser they spawned
from.  It was "neato" at first but, as I said, usability and
productivity was not there because it took up a lot of screen space
and was cumbersome.

The beautiful thing about Squeak is how it achieves most or all of the
*use-cases* presented in the video in much simpler and efficient ways.
To wit, the whole goal of Code Bubbles is the same goal of the Tracing
Messages Browser, except the TMB is like a Ferrari where Code Bubbles
is more like pretty flowers -- nice to look at but not letting the
developer "go fast" because of the real-estate issue.  TMB presents
*Traces* (e.g., just the method names without the code), so I can have
10 separate Traces on the screen, (e.g., 10 windows) but you ain't
gonna do that with Code Bubbles..  :)

Another thing I do often is duplicate browsers to set them off to the
side, or change the browser color to red (via its window menu) to
indicate a "Bug" needing fixed in that browser..  Sure, I don't have a
the pretty giant lady-bug icon but, functionally, its just as useful.

Squeak leverages the power of TSTTCPW to the max, that's what I love about it.

> Alan Kay said something that I'll have to paraphrase because I can't find
> the quote that the stages of acceptance of a blue plane idea - first they
> laugh at it, then they get angry, and then they say it was their idea the
> whole time.

Alan would never consider Code Bubbles a blue-plane idea...


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