Hi Subbu,
Thanks for the great tips ! .. and for taking an interest.
I don't know if you saw my follow up message, but thanks to some helpful
people on IRC #squeak, I was reminded that I had turned on "novice" mode.
The "VM" paradigm is both interesting and frustrating. I really do actually
"digging" around and it's neat that you can trace / debug / browse
everything on the system. Squeak suffers from the same-old open source
curse though that I've found with just about ever other o.s. package ...
lack of good documentation.
For example, I've been also playing with Ruby / Ruby on Rails, and .. though
admittedly an isolated case, their is no comparison for the documentation
for their "Intro / Newbie web appication compared to what I found for the
Magma database on the Wiki. The OmniBasse docs look better, but my first
attempt at installing it into Squeak 3.9-7067 have so far failed, I'll try
an older image.
You sound like you've been programming with Smalltalk for awhile :) I've
done some programming with a lot of languages but I'm not a real "hard core"
programmer.
Have you done anything with Seaside / web/remote programming in general?
Have you used SeasideHosting (www.seasidehosting.st) ?
In the Seaside image there is a remote browser that lets you change classes
/etc remotely, I'd like to setup a remote "workspace" where I could issue
commands to my image over the internet, especially since I'm on dialup, and
my image is ~25meg !
I'm looking at the seaside classes and the looking for that remote browser
class ,and also the "native" "doit" command to try to cobble something
together, but any tips you can offer (including a "that's not possible"
would be great. I'll take a look on SqueakMap and see if it's already been
done.
ttyl
Mike
I tried to get a smaller image (seaside2.6) running there but haven't had
much luck yet.
From: subbukk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic
questionsabout Squeak." <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Newbies] do it, print it, inspect it, explore it,debug it
missing from workspace menu
Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 12:17:19 +0530
On Saturday 19 May 2007 2:56 am, mstram wrote:
> This is only day 3 (hour ~20) of getting into Squeak / Seaside :) I've
> programmed with other languages / environments, but never with Smalltalk
> and am getting frustrated trying to "battle" the interface for the
simplest
> things.
Squeak is really a beast for beginners because its paradigm is very
different.
Missing and outdated docs and links add to the confusion. I arrived at the
following tips to get around:
1. Squeak image is like a 'software computer' - an entire computer, not
just
an IDE. The 'quit' doesn't shutdown, it only suspends this computer and the
vm resumes it from where you left off next time you start it. Objects
created
in this image can live on for years! This soft computer even crashes like a
real one. I always work with copies of images when experimenting with it.
2. Commands take the form "<subject> <verb> .." instead of the usual
"<verb>
<subject>". Though, this sounds simple, it takes some time to switch mental
models from imperative mode to message sends.
3. Most tutorials exhort beginners to "doIt". Please don't. Use "debugIt",
so
you can see trace the execution and learn a lot from it. Tracing something
even as simple as "3+4" can be very illuminating as it takes you through
compiler, string conversions, primitive calls and so on. After a few hours
browsing code, DNU pop-ups are no longer scary :-(. Morphs (like menus) can
be traced by using the debug halo item.
4. I find the "explain" menu item very handy while browsing code (e.g. Is
SoundPlayer a class or a variable?). It is buried one level deep in content
menu :-(. I also make liberal use of "implementors of" and "senders of" to
understand the larger context.
5. The "browse protocol" is another useful menu item listing all messages
(including inherited ones) for an object. Here again, the most useful
category, '--all--', comes in the end :-(.
Hope this helps .. Subbu
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