Slate UI

[Brian Rice]

On Jul 19, 2004, at 1:36 PM, Brian Rice wrote:
>
> On Jul 19, 2004, at 9:04 AM, Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
>> Okay. My actual focus was on the UI that is presented to the 
>> developer, not the code (although it is very important to make 
>> programming easier, too). In Squeak it is rather complicated to come 
>> along. It is very unintuitive to find the browser and then finding 
>> the Base64 code...in popular languages (Java, C#, C++) you can start 
>> right after you know how to click on "Compile". There must be a very 
>> simple and quick way to actually start programming.
>
> Agreed, and it should scale well.

I should mention that this remark about Squeak is absurd. In Squeak, 
you can start executing code anywhere, by selecting source and typing 
Alt-D for "do it", or Alt-P for "print it". There is also immediate 
inspection and live exploration of objects. (Google for "Squeak quick 
reference" and you will get a nice set of web pages that show you the 
hooks for all the core tools.) While Squeak's UI is non-standard, I 
don't care to ape the common platforms down to the last detail because 
they have huge assumptions about the run-time environment and mindset 
which have a strong detriment to real productivity (as opposed to 
imagined productivity). C, C++, C#, and Java are the ones that need to 
learn, and Squeak is one of the systems with the ideas that they are 
ignorant of.

The actual problem with Squeak is that the designers of (particularly 
the UI) frameworks are not sufficiently organized in their thoughts to 
provide a sane experience for the new developer. If anything, we err 
too far in the opposite direction.

I don't even know what you mean by "Base64 code", since that is only 
used to transmit code via email attachment in a portable and compressed 
way (and then it's only one way Squeak can do it), and Squeak's tools 
can immediately deal with it.

--
Brian T. Rice
LOGOS Research and Development
http://tunes.org/~water/