Hi,
For me, Leo is great for its community and for the ideas it embodies.
The main one, in my case, is being able to (de)construct thinking with
computers by building *emergent programmable outline structure*. It took
me years to understand the power of this idea: Any part of a Leo
document/tree can be accessed to program the tree itself or anything in
Leo. The first time I found this idea with documents was with TeXmacs[a]
at the end of 90's, then I found mind maps, but they're not really
programmable, and it was really clear to me until I found Leo and used
for several years *mostly* for non-programming.
Even if now I don't use python as my primary computer scripting language
and I'm more interested in Pharo, live coding, interactive documentation
and data activism & visualization, this Leo idea has been pretty
influential in the way I write (see [1], in Spanish) and in my research
and related prototypes, including Grafoscopio[2], a tool that tries to
combine and cross-pollinite ideas of IPtyhon, Leo and Smalltalk.
Tony Hoare (as quoted by Alan Kay in [3], page xvii) says that Algol 60
"was a great improvement, especially on its successors". Now that we're
talking about Leo legacy and continuity, I think is important to
underline a set of Leo's core ideas, that can be embedded and enriched
in other computing environments and tools, besides Leo itself. Of
course, as technologist we love our tools (any good craftsman does,
because they're deeply related with how and where his making takes
form), but sometimes implementation obscures ideas, and we try to see
the value of something inside itself, when maybe the best way to find it
is by "dislocation", so seeing incarnations of core ideas within
different implementations, helps to a better understanding of them and
is a way to enrich the legacy.
Thanks for Leo, its community and its ideas,
Offray
Links:
[a] http://texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html
[1]
http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/la-forma-en-que-escribo-para-el-doctorado.html
[2] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html
[3]
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=squeak+learning+programming+with+robots&t=ffsb&ia=products
On 05/07/16 12:46, Propadovic Nenad wrote:
Hello Ed and everybody,
I'm writing inspired by Eds post "Wanted: students for the Leo Code
Academy" of today, but I'm carrying this question with me since, well,
February, when I started using Leo, again, after a pause of maybe ten
years.
And yes, I recognize that Leo helps me organize my thoughts and code
and texts once in a while, but there seems to be a big gap between
those who dig it and those who don't, and I seem to be on the
don't-dig-side. Not the fact that it can be useful, but the fact that
ut can be useful to extents that it has some fanatic fans.
I tried using Leo for tasks that jumped at me, like, translating some
code from Perl to Python. I did it by analyzing the (very poor)
structure of that code in Leo, and it still took me a week; afterwards
I realized I would have been better of, if I had just translated it to
Python - command by command - , *without* understanding the structure,
and *then* tried to force structure upon it; so decomposing and
analyzing seems not be the right method for this kind of task.
Now, again, another task: I'm analyzing some Python code, much better
structured. Still, it's quite complex, the state-machine it contains
has multiple rather unclear transitions and conditions of changing
transitions... Leo helped me only so much, but just the implications
of this and that changing value in the code at runtime... is just not
yet clear to me. Trying to analyze seems to be less useful than adding
log entries to see the runtime values.
So, after seriously trying to use Leo for tasks that came along my
way, and finding it nice, but not so useful that I'd say it's
indespensable, may I ask: what are you guys using Leo for?
I realize that writing code of the size and quality of Leo itself is a
huge task, and would be hard without a good tool; but are there
smaller, but also very useful things you can do with Leo, which would
be much harder without it?
(Yes, I have read the documentation; not I have not *studied* it).
I'd appreciate examples which *show* me why Leo is great. I really
want to love it, honestly. I *tried* to find it extremely useful ten
years ago, when I stumbled upon it after reading about the greatness
of outlines (articles from Steve Litt). Yet by now I have the
impression that it's most useful in a greenfield environment, when you
have control of structure, anyway. Being a contractor, hopping from
project to project, I almost never do such development.
Thoughts? Answers? I'd really appreciate them.
Regards,
Nenad
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