January 2012 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-project] This is so cool, and we can compute it !

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

On 27 Jan 2012, at 10:34, Nicolas Cellier wrote: > This is probably the fact that some lispers had the idea of > representing integers of arbitrary length then fraction with infinite > precision in the machine. > > This inspired a post > http://smallissimo.blogspot.com/2012/01/which-fraction-has-these-digits.html Cool! I did of course not find this myself, I read it here http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/16393143676/fun-with-math-dividing-one-by-9… who read it here http://www.geekosystem.com/one-divided-by-998001/ who read it here http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/01/08/math-notes-76/ But I really don't know if that last person invented it.

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

Hey Dimitris, Thanks for the reaction, although it is not the one that I expected ;-) I did a lot of Common Lisp programming in the past, including publishing several open source projects. So yes I know that community. And yes it has an aura of elitism about it and a reputation of being unfriendly to newcomers; whether this is true or not is should not be discussed here. Smalltalk has a number of principles ( http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html ) that are quite different; one of the main goals is to empower its users by offering a comprehensible system. My point of view and conviction is that positive energy and enthousiasm drive open source. I recognize it in the Pharo community. Sven On 27 Jan 2012, at 10:12, dimitris chloupis wrote: > This article is really encapsulates the attitude and what is wrong with programming in general. The attitude of superiority and intelligence that seems to plague coders and being the biggest obstacle to progress. And what biggest proof of lack of progress than the fact that Lips is probably the very best that programming languages have to offer. 40 year old technology, how sad that is ? Actually if there is one thing thats driving the coding community is lack of enthusiasm, is about sticking to what is already there , is the fact of being "practical" and "realistic" about code in general. How much progress we have seen the last 40 years ? Sure its alot , but what happens if you take games out of it , how much hardware would have progress ? How much software ? Very little. > > If you take out games that exercise a clear push to graphics and processing power and complex data manipulation approaches , AI and many other things , the rest of software out there , if you remove some exceptions here and there, is the same boring stuff which makes you wait for a year to add a single feature you need with a dozen more you don't need. > > Its not enthusiasm that drives coding, its money and profit. > > Then we arrive at the open source phenomenon, which I agree its great and amazing and where exciting stuff really happens. But even open has some major issue to resolve. First is to anyone surprise is that all that open source is rarely used and recycled, most open source projects seem to start from scratch , rarely using source from other projects. And then of course there is the big issue of licence , its open source, but its not really open ... GPL as an example of a licence driving open source back instead of forward. > > For me the main problem with is the whole aura of "elitism" , what better example than Lisp, where beginners are attacked and be excluded. It took me 4 years to really get into Lisp after hearing about because of all the bad attitude. Its the whole motivation to prove that coding is for "smart people" and not "normal" people as he mentions in his article. There is something "mysteriously" superior about coders .... The only thing I find "mysterious" about coders is that they think they are "superior" or somewhat special. They are not. > > And if we can really kick all that non sense outside coding, if we can make coding for "stupid" , "normal" people and open source project non "VIP Clubs" , if we really make coding inviting for people then maybe just maybe we will see open source that instead of 10 developers and 1 million user will have 1 million developer that are also users. > > Of course in the end what is wrong with the coding community is not detached with what is wrong with the world and human attitude in general. > > Saying that I am not saying there not some amazing projects out there and some great people, but I really cant share his enthusiasm and optimism. > > PS : he seems to complain a lot about the forks of Lisp. Is it not Lisp a factory of programming languages ? I agree with him that those should not be called Common Lisp if they do not conform but I disagree that their existence is a bad thing. You cant go forward if you dont reinvent the wheel. Even though "reinventing" seems to be a forbidden word in coding. > > From: Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)beta9.be> > To: "Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr Development" <Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr> > Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012, 10:18 > Subject: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers > > The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting: > > http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253 > > Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo. > > The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) a programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He died a couple of years ago. > > Sven > >

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] This is so cool, and we can compute it !

by Nicolas Cellier

This is probably the fact that some lispers had the idea of representing integers of arbitrary length then fraction with infinite precision in the machine. This inspired a post http://smallissimo.blogspot.com/2012/01/which-fraction-has-these-digits.html Nicolas 2012/1/27 StÃ©phane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse(a)inria.fr>: > this is probably the result of the constant effort of nicolas and a couple of others :) > On Jan 26, 2012, at 8:44 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote: > >> This is so cool, and we can compute it using Pharo Smalltalk. >> >> Try inspecting or printing the result of these expressions: >> >> Â 1/9801 asScaledDecimal: 200 >> >> Â 1/998001 asScaledDecimal: 3000 >> >> And have a good look at the regularity in the digits of the fraction. >> >> Amazing ! >> >> Sven >> > >

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers

by Fernando Olivero

Gerald Weinberg accurately describes us in this book titled: The Psychology Of Computer Programming, published in 1971. He talked about Ego-less programming[2], which nowadays empowers open source projects. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver-Anniversary/dp… [2] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EgolessProgramming On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 10:12 AM, dimitris chloupis <thekilon(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > This article is really encapsulates the attitude and what is wrong with programming in general. The attitude of superiority and intelligence that seems to plague coders and being the biggest obstacle to progress. And what biggest proof of lack of progress than the fact that Lips is probably the very best that programming languages have to offer. 40 year old technology, how sad that is ? Actually if there is one thing thats driving the coding community is lack of enthusiasm, is about sticking to what is already there , is the fact of being "practical" and "realistic" about code in general. How much progress we have seen the last 40 years ? Sure its alot , but what happens if you take games out of it , how much hardware would have progress ? How much software ? Very little. > > If you take out games that exercise a clear push to graphics and processing power and complex data manipulation approaches , AI and many other things , the rest of software out there , if you remove some exceptions here and there, is the same boring stuff which makes you wait for a year to add a single feature you need with a dozen more you don't need. > > Its not enthusiasm that drives coding, its money and profit. > > Then we arrive at the open source phenomenon, which I agree its great and amazing and where exciting stuff really happens. But even open has some major issue to resolve. First is to anyone surprise is that all that open source is rarely used and recycled, most open source projects seem to start from scratch , rarely using source from other projects. And then of course there is the big issue of licence , its open source, but its not really open ... GPL as an example of Â a licence driving open source back instead of forward. > > For me the main problem with is the whole aura of Â "elitism" , what better example than Lisp, where beginners are attacked and be excluded. It took me 4 years to really get into Lisp after hearing about because of all the bad attitude. Its the whole motivation to prove that coding is for "smart people" and not "normal" people as he mentions in his article. There is something "mysteriously" superior about coders .... The only thing I find "mysterious" about coders is that they think they are "superior" or somewhat special. They are not. > > And if we can really kick all that non sense outside coding, if we can make coding for "stupid" , "normal" people and open source project non "VIP Clubs" , if we really make coding inviting for people then maybe just maybe we will see open source that instead of 10 developers and 1 million user will have 1 million developer that are also users. > > Of course in the end what is wrong with the coding community is not detached with what is wrong with the world and human attitude in general. > > Saying that I am not saying there not some amazing projects out there and some great people, but I really cant share his enthusiasm and optimism. > > PS : he seems to complain a lot about the forks of Lisp. Is it not Lisp a factory of programming languages ? I agree with him that those should not be called Common Lisp if they do not conform but I disagree that their existence is a bad thing. You cant go forward if you dont reinvent the wheel. Even though "reinventing" seems to be a forbidden word in coding. > > ________________________________ > From: Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)beta9.be> > To: "Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr Development" <Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr> > Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012, 10:18 > Subject: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers > > The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting: > > Â http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253 > > Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo. > > The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) a programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He died a couple of years ago. > > Sven > >

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers

by dimitris chloupis

This article is really encapsulates the attitude and what is wrong with programming in general. The attitude of superiority and intelligence that seems to plague coders and being the biggest obstacle to progress. And what biggest proof of lack of progress than the fact that Lips is probably the very best that programming languages have to offer. 40 year old technology, how sad that is ? Actually if there is one thing thats driving the coding community is lack of enthusiasm, is about sticking to what is already there , is the fact of being "practical" and "realistic" about code in general. How much progress we have seen the last 40 years ? Sure its alot , but what happens if you take games out of it , how much hardware would have progress ? How much software ? Very little.Â If you take out games that exercise a clear push to graphics and processing power and complex data manipulation approaches , AI and many other things , the rest of software out there , if you remove some exceptions here and there, is the same boring stuff which makes you wait for a year to add a single feature you need with a dozen more you don't need.Â Its notÂ enthusiasmÂ that drives coding, its money and profit.Â Then we arrive at the open source phenomenon, which I agree its great and amazing and where exciting stuff really happens. But even open has some major issue to resolve. First is to anyone surprise is that all that open source is rarely used and recycled, most open source projects seem to start from scratch , rarely using source from other projects. And then of course there is the big issue of licence , its open source, but its not really open ... GPL as an example of Â a licence driving open source back instead of forward.Â For me the main problem with is the whole aura of Â "elitism" , what better example than Lisp, where beginners are attacked and be excluded. It took me 4 years to really get into Lisp after hearing about because of all the bad attitude. Its the whole motivation to prove that coding is for "smart people" and not "normal" people as he mentions in his article. There is something "mysteriously" superior about coders .... The only thing I find "mysterious" about coders is that they think they are "superior" or somewhat special. They are not.Â And if we can really kick all that non sense outside coding, if we can make coding for "stupid" , "normal" people and open source project non "VIP Clubs" , if we really make codingÂ invitingÂ for people then maybe just maybe we will see open source that instead of 10 developers and 1 million user will have 1 million developer that are also users. Â Of course in the end what is wrong with the coding community is not detached with what is wrong with the world and human attitude in general.Â Saying that I am not saying there not some amazing projects out there and some great people, but I really cant share his enthusiasm and optimism.Â PS : he seems to complain a lot about the forks of Lisp. Is it not Lisp a factory of programming languages ? I agree with him that those should not be called Common Lisp if they do not conform but I disagree that theirÂ existenceÂ is a bad thing. You cant go forward if you dont reinvent the wheel. Even though "reinventing" seems to be aÂ forbiddenÂ word in coding. Â ________________________________ From: Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)beta9.be> To: "Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr Development" <Pharo-project(a)lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012, 10:18 Subject: [Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting: Â http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253 Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo. The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) a programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He died a couple of years ago. Sven

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Proposed (or just written down desired) Keyboard Event Model

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

On Jan 26, 2012, at 7:07 PM, Guillermo Polito wrote: > Following the Event chronicles :P > > Since I know that some people are working on event Stuff(Stef, Fernando, Igor), I'd like to listen to what they(or anybody else :) ) think about this. > I've no code (yet) except for the one I've written to play with the vm and test the keyboard stuff :P. And I know there is some package where Stef and Igor where refactoring the event stuff and I don't want to duplicate efforts either, jeje. have a look at EventModel on squeak source. For now we did not modify the handling of keystrokes. We "just" reified event instead of manipulating eventbuf uglies. I'm sick now so my brain is slow. Two points are - transition from old to new . Is there a path with little impact on users. I guess so. - what about VM changesâ¦ Stef > So, this is what from other models I think a complete keyboard event model should have: > > Keyboard interaction raises 3 events (3 different kind of objects!): > > â¢ Keydown > When a key is pressed, it informs the pressed key with modifiers (it should not send a unicode value of a character). > > Should understand the messages: > > "boolean indicating which modifiers where pressed" > #alt > #cmd > #shift > #ctrl > #opt? > > "a collection of modifier objects" > #modifiers > > "the key pressed. It is not a Character, it should be an instance of Key (read about Keys in the Glitches below)" > #key > > "to know if the event wasHandled" > #handled: > #handled > > â¢ Keypress > When a key with a unicode representation is pressed, informs it. > > should understand the messages: > > "the unicode character representation of this event. It is a Character, not an instance of Key" > #character > > "to know if the event wasHandled" > #handled: > #handled > > â¢ Keyup > When a key is released, it informs the released key with modifiers (it should not send a unicode value of a character). > > Should understand the messages: > > "the main key pressed. It is not a Character, it should be an instance of Key (read about Keys in the Glitches below)" > #key > > "to know if the event wasHandled" > #handled: > #handled > > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > > Glitches > > 1) Today every keyboard event handled on the image side is handled on keypress, which: > - limits the ammount of shortcuts you can have (because there are keys that you can't handle) > - to make it work, there are some hacks (at image and vm side) to allow keys with no char representation enter as keypresses (like arrow keys). > - changing this is ALOT of work :P > > 2) Some key representation varies from platform to platform. i.e.: A Shift-only press generates today a keydown event with: > - a 254 keyCode value in unix > - a 16 keyCode value in windows > > So I think a "table" has to be built and documented for mappings for each key in a keyboard. Examples of this can be found in enums/defs from other platforms: > > Windows platform: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd375731(v=vs.85).a… > .Net: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.keys(v=vs.71).… > X11 (current used window system in unix vm): http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/proto/x11proto/plain/keysymdef.h > Javascript: http://www.cambiaresearch.com/articles/15/javascript-char-codes-key-codes > Gtk: http://www.koders.com/c/fidD9E5E78FD91FE6ABDD6D3F78DA5E4A0FADE79933.aspx > > After that, both vm's and image should follow that table :). And of course, these keys should be reified in the image side independently of their character pairs. > > Guille >

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Beginner question about "self" in block

by Henrik Johansen

On Jan 27, 2012, at 6:11 53AM, Ben Coman wrote: > StÃ©phane Ducasse wrote: >> Welcome >> >> >> >>> Hi, I have one begginer question. It is may be simple, but it very baffles me. >>> >>> I am reading Pharo by Example (great book btw, thanks!). I'm in chapter two where I'm creating Lights Out game. There is this simple code http://pastebin.com/eQregZ35. What baffles me is line 10. I assign "Block of code" to mouseAction variable of LOCell. In this Block, there is "self", that obviously refers to LOGame object in that time. But when is this Block actualy EVALUATED (when I click on Cell), "self" should be reffering to LOCell object, isn't it? If I inspect one LOCell, inspector shows that it has instance variable >>> >> >> Here is a draft of a next chapter on block :) >> But I should finish it :) >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> >> But I want to add how block are implemented at the bye code level so it take times because not that many people are helping, so I have to learn first. >> >> Stef >> > Thanks Stef. A very enlightening read. Its has helped in an example I'll relate for other neophytes, and in case there are any traps or patterns I am missing. > > I have been struggling with how to implement a bidirectional relationship between two classes such that consistency is enforced. Take for instance the following classes... > Object subclass: #Book instanceVariableNames: 'bookTitle library' > Object subclass: #Library instanceVariableNames: 'libraryName books' > > I want both the 'books' and 'library' instvars to remain private - meaning that I don't want the default accessors providing direct access to either. Then a method like 'Library>>addBook: aBook' which can update its internal state modifying the 'books' collection cannot update the internal 'library' state of 'aBook' - without Book having a setter method to directly change the 'library' instvar - which I want to avoid having. Trying to resolve this led me into recursion hell with too much cross checking and guarding code. > > What I was wanting was a way to expose the private state of one object to another object in a controlled manner. So now I think this might be achieved like this... > > Library>>addBook: aBook > aBook addToLibrary: self. > > Book>>addToLibrary: aLibrary > aLibrary addBook: self withBackLink: [ :backlinkValue | library := backlinkValue ]. > > Library>>addBook: aBook withBackLink: setBacklinkBlock > books ifNil: [ books := OrderedCollection new ]. > books add: aBook. > setBacklinkBlock value: self. When forgoing accessors to keep state private, it's usually a good idea to avoid lazy initialization, since you cannot centralize the check anywhere: Library >> Initialize books := OrderedCollection new. Another common solution, is use two "levels" of methods: (basic* usually put in a private category) Book >> addToLibrary: aLibrary self basicAddToLibrary: aLibrary. aLibrary basicAddBook: self. Library >> addBook: aBook self basicAddBook: aBook. aBook uncheckedAddToLibrary: self. Book basicAddToLibrary: aLibrary library := aLibrary. Library >> basicAddBook: aBook books add: aBook Basically, split the methods ensuring consistency from those actually modifying state. Note that basicAddToLibrary is in essence a "default accessor" in this case, but not intended for public consumption. IMHO, clarity in smalltalk is usually better achieved by categorization, naming, and comments than creating a restrictive API. Cheers, Henry

Jan. 27, 2012

[Pharo-project] Enthousiasm is the main currency among developers

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

The following 10 year old Usenet article is quite interesting: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253 Although it is quite long and partly about Common Lisp, its main point is that enthousiasm and positive energy are the main/natural currency among developers. I think that this is also the main driving force behind Pharo. The author is Erik Naggum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) a programmer and (in)famous, provocative participant to many discussions. He died a couple of years ago. Sven

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Written down current Keyboard Event Model

by StÃ©phane Ducasse

Guillermo what you are doing is really cool. We should take notes and really improve the system. I read the remark of Juan and (did not get enough time to get it). but we need a good way to handle events in a good way. So it would be great if you could log all your findings into a document, - first it could help everybody when we discuss - second we could (not sure but why not) write an article for ESUG workshop. Stef On Jan 26, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Guillermo Polito wrote: > > > On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com> wrote: > to subscribe a morph to this event just do: > > Actually, we do work :). We are the only one. > Just try: > > aMorph on: #keyStroke send: #value to: [ UIManager inform: 'hello!' ].

Jan. 27, 2012

Re: [Pharo-project] Meaning of the name "Pharo"

by Max Leske

Pretty cool! Maybe still a bit cryptic but it's pretty much what I was hoping for. Thanks Norbert. Max On 27.01.2012, at 08:54, Norbert Hartl wrote: > > > Am 27.01.2012 um 08:17 schrieb Max Leske <maxleske(a)gmail.com>: > >> I always enjoy it if a product / project with a "funny" name explains that name somewhere (origin, intention). I think it says a lot about the kind of project it is (how dedicated are the people? If the name is crap, the product will probably be tooâ¦). So I thought, it might be cool to introduce a paragraph (in the "About" section maybe) that explains the origins of the name "Pharo". >> >> Any thoughts? >> > Named after its inventor smalltalk had only a k-light [1] to shed some light into the dark territory called programming. We recognized that we need something bigger to guide our way. That's how the lighthouse idea was born. Although it's spelled wrongly the name pharo refers to the famous pharos of alexandria [2] which is also the required size the lighthouse needs to have in order to make us see anything. > > [1] http://www.what-if.com/SECURE/pisat/klight-p-1.html > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria

Jan. 27, 2012