> On Saturday 22 July 2017 06:51 PM, Tim Mackinnon wrote:
>
>> The one that stuck out for me (and is actually mentioned in another
>> thread this week) was the class/instance method difference. They
>> conceptually understood the difference coming from other languages
>> but our UI is tricky to understand with the Class button toggle we
>> have, and if you get methods on the wrong side, like with a test,
>> it's quite confusing.
>
>
> It is an easy mistake to make and I have often seen this confusion in
> beginners. With the attention on the methods panel and text input, it is
> easy to overlook the class toggle button :-(.
>
> An easy fix is to switch background color to differentiate between class and
> instance methods in both code and input panels. A better way would be to use
> tabs (like in Inspector).
>
> BTW, I use the metaphor of toys (objects), moulds (classes) and mould
> factory (metaclass). A mould is an object from the perspective of the mould
> maker. Therefore operations on classes are 'methods' from the maker's
> perspective (note the recursion!).
>
>> Anyway - this got me thinking - why do we bother having a toggle in
>> our UI for this these days? Of course we know there is a class and a
>> metaclass but given that we have icons for methods now (and also have
>> a Protocol pane ) why don't we just show all the methods we have in
>> one list and let you filter them or even see them all? It seems much
>> easier and way more efficient to rapidly code this way.
>
>
> This perspective comes from the traditional way - code and compile. In
> Pharo, we code one method at a time and sources are held in an external file
> and a pointer stored in each method, so displaying all methods in one panel
> would result in multiple file reads.
>
>> The only question then would be how to create methods of the right
>> type - whether to have a button to create the right template (and put
>> the  browser code pane in the right context) or whether to indicate
>> it by convention of the method name when creating it like + new:
>> aSize etc. (Or even: class new: aSize etc).
>>
>> The more I think about it, the more it seems like something we should
>> consider trying both for making ourselves more efficient (I'll bet
>> everyone has written a method on the wrong side by mistake) and also
>> helping newcomers.
>
>
> Such mistakes are part of the learning curve and decrease with time.
>
> Regards .. Subbu
>