On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 2:47 PM, Norbert Hartl <[hidden email]> wrote:
I get that. All naming is difficult. That there are many different ways to say the same thing in natural language is I think a common problem to many languages, especially English. Just remember the last time you tried to do some free text search for some phrase. Takes me ages to find old messages in email. So even if method is well-named, it likely has only one of a number of plausible good names. And if it has a usefully short nickname (look at unix and lisp, cat & cdr etc) then it must likely be learned by rote.
So the issue is not naming; it is how to /find/ functionality. And so in Smalltalk the issue is how to encourage programmers to go find things. The MessageFinder is amazing. But people don't use it. If they did no one would be proposing to add chomp to the standard library.
<old man alert>When I learnt Smalltalk there were several factors that made it easy for me to learn. It was much smaller. I thought it was cool. I had the time to learn it. But when I learnt it the browser was simple, refactoring hadn't been invented, there was no MethodFinder, and there was almost _no_ documentation. Basically I learnt it by playing with it, exploring it, reading it, building it.</old man alert>
So why aren't people taking the time to learn it today? Is it the system's fault? Is it too big? Are the readable parts of the system non-existent, or too difficult to find? Is it some cultural change that means people can't learn such systems any more? Was it only learnable by a few people back in the day and it remains unsuitable for a mass audience? Is it impossible to design user interfaces that invite exploration? Do people no longer want to play with the system but instead want to use it to get something done fast, and can't spare the time to learn it properly? Are computing languages like English, and every programming language must adopt the conventions and vocabulary of the most popular? Is inheritance too hard to navigate to discover that SequenceableCollection has lots of useful String mehtods, and some useful methods on ByteString are in String, etc?
I think suggestions that one add functionality that already exists in the system point to some interesting issues. And I think someone with an HCI or UI bent might get somewhere approaching these questions systematically.
you're welcome :-)
best, Eliot
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Hi 2014-02-25 3:10 GMT+04:00 Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]>: Is inheritance too hard to navigate to discover that SequenceableCollection has lots of useful String mehtods, and some useful methods on ByteString are in String, etc? In VW there is great option for method pane: visibility level. You can choose how deep you want to see methods in hierarchy. It will be very helpful to get it in Nautilus |
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