2013/1/30 Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com>

2013/1/30 Frank Shearar <frank.shearar@gmail.com>

On 30 January 2013 22:20, Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com> wrote:

In st-80 these were protocols and the name make you think of it differently.
If you want to continue thinking of it in term of category, then I understand your miss-conception.
I'm curious to know when the term category was introduced...
Maybe with Monticello where it means 'Package'?
Clever hacks sometimes are not that clever...

Nicolas

Sure. I also remember people talking about "the protocol of Foo", meaning the set of messages that Foo understood. That's how the Objective-C and Clojure people understand the term, for what it's worth.

Sometimes the those who came before named things poorly... :)

I don't know what you think was named poorly...
I just wonder, in term of communicating by sending messages, what is the best name for defining the set of messages an object can understand? Category or protocol ;)
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Nicolas

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2013/1/30 Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name>

Am 30.01.2013 um 22:03 schrieb Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com>:

First, these are not categories. categories are for classes.
These are protocols.

Well, that's one reason I took the term "uncategorized". If I take the context menu in the category (!) pane I see

So it looks to me that pharo has the notion of categories for organizing methods.�

A protocol is like an interface, or you can view it as services

offered by the instances of this class...
For example take a look at Number you have
'comparing', is a very generic service, so that any object can be in a set
numbers have this property to have full order, so they offer a bit
more than = and hash
'printing' a very generic Object protocol too for interacting
(inspectors, debuggers...)
'arithmetic' is some more specialized service offered by numbers
'mathematical functions' too.

The category is a service for humans made by humans. The methods in e.g. "comparing" would work the same without a category. I think we can agree on the fact that relying on categories in code is mostly something not desirable.�

If the classification helps a lot, IMHO it's not only related to the
number of messages.
It helps to declare/discover which service will be offered, and those
can be completely transversal (printing vs comparing).

'private' has a value too, as there is no service to expect here...

So I have to disagree. I see these as essentials.

I did not decline that categories _can_ be useful and in fact they are. I'm also inclined to say that it is a good thing having all methods categorized in the distributed pharo image. So lint rules and such testing is good. But at the same time I don't see a point in enforcing it for everyone by choosing a stronger or even insulting term (at that point I decided to reply) for uncategorized methods.�

Norbert
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Nicolas

2013/1/30 Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name>:

Am 29.01.2013 um 16:57 schrieb St�phane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr>:

Hi guys

I spend my time recategorizing methods.

I would like the change the intention of 'as yet unclassified' because this is a PLAGUE.
It is like throwing papers on the floor.
So we should have a different name to indicate that it should be fixed.

Any ideas?

'you are a dirty programmer - change me'

To be honest I have problems understanding why method categorization is so important. Often I don't care a single bit about categories because I don't understand them. I often categorize just to make lint happy :)
What is the use? Declaring usage patterns? Declaring visibility? Use as method extensions marker? anything you like just classify? I can understand that it can help making the access of certain methods of a class easier. But that is particular true for classes with a lot of methods. Most of the classes are rather small. In most of my own developments I would consider most huge classes a design problem in my code. So I would try to fix that.
And finally it is not easy to learn about them because the browser is not helping. If you browse through the methods of a class the category pane doesn't get updated. So even if I want to learn by getting used to them it is hard.

I would make the none categorized term weaker by naming it "uncategorizied" so at least I have the change to deliberately not categorizing my methods without being annoyed by someones opinion about what is essential.

my 2 cents,

Norbert