Re: do it, print it, inspect it, explore it, debug it missing from workspace menu

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 <subbukk@xxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: "A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic 
> questionsabout Squeak." <beginners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: beginners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 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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