[self-interest] Re: Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and..

[Russell Allen]

Documentation is definately a big part of this.  The manuals are a very 
good start, but need transcribing from Framemaker/PDF to a more friendly 
format like the Sphinx/RestructuredText format that the website uses so 
that we can generate HTML, PDF etc as well as make easy updates

(Big hint to anyone with lots of free time :) :)

Specifically responding to Adam's thoughts below, if we are to think of 
delegated objects as being shared parts of the original objects then in 
a sense the Self 'class' is just one object.  It is just that the 
Outliner for an object always shows me only the local slots and not 
slots shared with other objects.  Give me an outliner that shows all* 
the slots that a string or a morph has and I suspect the ease of 
exploration of the image would improve.

- Russell

* well, maybe excluding delegation to the lobby

Adam Spitz wrote:
>  
>
> Here's a question I've wondered about for a while.
>
> I don't have any formal teaching experience at all, but in my 
> experiences as a student, watching other students around me try to 
> learn object-oriented programming, it seemed to me like one of the 
> major stumbling blocks was the difference between an object and an 
> instance and a class. ("No, typing Car doesn't get you an actual car - 
> it gets you the Car *class*. To get a car object, you have to 
> *instantiate* the class.") So I always thought that it ought to be 
> easier for a beginner to learn Self than Smalltalk. But I've never had 
> a classroom full of beginners to try it out on. I'd be very interested 
> to hear the experiences of people who've actually tried teaching Self, 
> especially to people who've never programmed before.
>
> Mind you, I'm still not quite satisfied with the way that a Self 
> "class" is made up of two different boxes on the screen (prototype + 
> traits). But Smalltalk has the same problem (instance + class), and 
> I've never managed to figure out a way to get rid of it. I'm guessing 
> the two-box problem is one of those carpet-bump issues. But at least 
> we don't have to worry about what class a class is an instance of...
>
> Adam
>
> --- In self-interest at yahoogroups.com 
> <mailto:self-interest%40yahoogroups.com>, Michael Latta <lattam at ...> 
> wrote:
> >
> > The value in a system like Self, and Smalltalk, and Ruby, is the value
> > to the expert user. To a programer that has mastered the language,
> > the flexibility, ability to extend the language, and to implement new
> > abstractions, are what make a language system stand out. With image
> > based programming there is also the ease of access to the objects and
> > internals that far exceeds most memory based programming
> > environments. But, again mostly those benefit the experienced user.
> >
> > Michael
>
> 

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