[squeak-dev] The Inbox: Kernel-cmfcmf.1251.mcz

Marcel Taeumel marcel.taeumel at hpi.de
Wed Aug 7 07:42:50 UTC 2019


Hi Chris,

I think we mean the same here. I just wanted to add the word "meaningful" to your suggestions:

 "Answer whether the receiver can be sent a message named aSymbol and expect a meaningful answer."

Best,
Marcel
Am 06.08.2019 22:05:35 schrieb Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com>:


On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 3:18 AM Marcel Taeumel <marcel.taeumel at hpi.de [mailto:marcel.taeumel at hpi.de]> wrote:

One can always send any message to any receiver. :-)

Sure, a Smalltalk developer gets that.  But from the context of what's meaningful to a Dynabook user simply interested in using Squeak objects as an app, they simply know they don't want to see that "does not understand" error message.  "Can send" is synonymous enough with that.  But my main point is not about what exact words, but about the idea of speaking to that specific audience through the #firstComment.

 


The question is whether the answer can be meaningful or not. Can a client expect a meaningful answer from such a message send?

Right.  The thrust of my post is that the "client" in your statement above is a Dynabook user, and _not_ a Smalltalk developer.
 
Neither mentioning method dictionary nor superclasses help figure out when and why to send #respondsTo: to an object. Only Behavior is the domain and place to talk about method dictionary and superclasses. The comment in #canUnderstand: does already mention method dictionary and superclasses.

Users are only concerned with "sending messages to objects", nothing else.  Those Dictionary's are below the level of what they care about.  Even the notion of inheritance (superclasses) will cause their eyes to glaze over.  Sending messages to concrete instances is where the rubber meets the road.  The #firstComment is a opportunity to open up the Squeak class-library to a new group of people, without affecting our ability to talk to Smalltalk developers in the 2nd - nth comments.  But most of the time, I'm sure the one single user-centric comment is sufficient for both groups.

 - Chris

 

Just my two cents. :-)

Best,
Marcel
Am 06.08.2019 07:00:19 schrieb Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com [mailto:asqueaker at gmail.com]>:
Hi there, as we go to fix comments, may we take the opportunity to see if we'd like to change the nature of the comment in general?

Here's where I'm going:  "built-in documentation".  For all #firstComments anyway, in methods throughout the system, if we would direct those particular comments toward the *Dynabook user*, something like:

   "Answer whether the receiver can be sent a message named aSymbol."

then relatively simple systems can easily extract it to help connect users to a Dynabook experience.  Separate comments can be used to describe the 'dictionarys' or whatever implementation if desired, but since they wouldn't be the #firstComment, they wouldn't be presented in the user layer.


It's a simple but powerful leverage, what do you think?

Best,
  Chris

On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 9:39 AM <commits at source.squeak.org [mailto:commits at source.squeak.org]> wrote:

A new version of Kernel was added to project The Inbox:
http://source.squeak.org/inbox/Kernel-cmfcmf.1251.mcz [http://source.squeak.org/inbox/Kernel-cmfcmf.1251.mcz]

==================== Summary ====================

Name: Kernel-cmfcmf.1251
Author: cmfcmf
Time: 5 August 2019, 4:39:08.95825 pm
UUID: eb7ae4e2-7697-7745-b4c3-4f9ce5975e2b
Ancestors: Kernel-mt.1250

Clarify comment in Object>>respondsTo: to indicate that the method can also be defined in a superclass.

=============== Diff against Kernel-mt.1250 ===============

Item was changed:
  ----- Method: Object>>respondsTo: (in category 'class membership') -----
+ respondsTo: aSymbol
+       "Answer whether the method dictionary of the receiver's class or any of its superclasses contains
- respondsTo: aSymbol
-       "Answer whether the method dictionary of the receiver's class contains
        aSymbol as a message selector."

        ^self class canUnderstand: aSymbol!



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