On Mar 5, 2012, at 11:33 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
>
> Just sharing some small thoughts as they cross my mind on the chance the are
> of any interest. Not necessarily looking for any response or action.
>
> 1. In the System Browser when viewing a method, this might include an
> expandable list of overridden methods. Beneath the code of the current
> method being viewed each 'super' method would be listed with an expandable
> '+' symbol. I have attached a mock up [1] showing all expanded but the
> default might be the collapsed state.
>
> 2. The debugger lists instance and temporary variables to be inspected, but
> not every object that 'passes through' the method being executed is held in a
> variable. More often messages are chained together such that to inspect the
> object returned from the middle of this chain you need to select that bit of
> the code and choose to inspect it again. However there may be side-effects
> of executing that a second time so you are not guaranteed to end up looking
> at the object actually encountered by the execution of the method.
> What would be interesting would be if in certain circumstances every object
> returned by every message in a method was held to be inspected. This might
> take the form of hovering or right-clicking on any message an choosing
> something like 'inspect context'. The circumstances this might be turned on
> for could be:
> a. globally
> b. ongoing execution from within debugger
> c. certain methods / classes / categories.
>
> 3. With screens getting much bigger, perhaps the debugger could have an
> option to show code from previous calls back to a certain level. I have
> attached a mock up [2]. Even though this image shows using a lot of vertical
> space, this would be scrolled. Ultimately it would be horizontal space
> required as the code steps in, but todays wide screens match this even better
> than those a few years ago. Note the yellow highlighted line in the top pane
> which can position how far back you look.
>
I like the debugger idea! Especially combined with mouse-over infos (show the
value if var in a pop-up when the mouse it over it), this should allow for a
very quick way to understand code...
Marcus
--
Marcus Denker -- http://marcusdenker.de
