2012/1/6 Lukas Renggli <[email protected]>: > On 6 January 2012 11:20, Peter Hugosson-Miller <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 6 jan 2012, at 06:41, "Gerry Weaver" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 2. There appear to be some tool choices in the Pharo image. I would like to >> be able to create a class and it's methods in an editor in one go. I like >> being able to see all of the class code at once. Is there a way to do this? >> I just want to be able to type it all in and accept (evaluate?) all at >> once. >> >> This is an interesting question to me personally. After 15 years of working >> exclusively in Smalltalk I've recently been forced to start programming in >> Java, where the source code is always (as far as I know) arranged in the way >> you describe. >> >> This organization just emphasizes the dead and compiled nature of Java (and >> similar languages), compared to the living objects of Smalltalk, where even >> methods are objects, created by sending messages to other objects. Source >> code is relegated to being a mere artifact, which can be saved and organized >> in any way one wishes, and preferably never shows its ugly face to the coder >> :-p > > Which of course is no argument why Smalltalk code could not be > displayed in a more programmer friendly way as a continuous block of > text. There is no technical reason why source ranges in text box > couldn't correspond to life method objects. Compared to other > languages it is extremely tedious in Smalltalk to get an overview over > a project, a package, or even a single class or to navigate between > entities. > >> And yes, I really *really* miss a good, object oriented class browser! > > Eclipse is pretty good, especially with the Java Browsing Perspective. > > Lukas >
As soon as you would display the code for many methods in a single text pane, you will find file-based-educated people making large refactorings in a single pass... Imagine this leads to many syntax errors, they will soon be willing to save their changes for a later rework... This would be a complete change in programming flow and if we really want to support this, we would have to: - add a way to save syntactically incorrect code - let IDE tools work on partially correct code (syntax highlighting, navigation, etc...) IMHO, these features add a lot of complexity... Is it really worth? I like the discipline of focusing on a single method until it is at least syntactically correct. On the other hand, in Smalltalk we have to transfer the complexity of multi-method changes in the refactoring engines/menus when some simple modify/replace in a file would work. Nicolas > -- > Lukas Renggli > www.lukas-renggli.ch >
