On 6 January 2012 11:20, Peter Hugosson-Miller <oldmanlink@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6 jan 2012, at 06:41, "Gerry Weaver" <gerryw@compvia.com> wrote:
2. There appear to be some tool choices in the Pharo image. I would like to be able to create a class and it's methods in an editor in one go. I like being able to see all of the class code at once. Is there a way to do this? Â I just want to be able to type it all in and accept (evaluate?) all at once.
This is an interesting question to me personally. After 15 years of working exclusively in Smalltalk I've recently been forced to start programming in Java, where the source code is always (as far as I know) arranged in the way you describe.
This organization just emphasizes the dead and compiled nature of Java (and similar languages), compared to the living objects of Smalltalk, where even methods are objects, created by sending messages to other objects. Source code is relegated to being a mere artifact, which can be saved and organized in any way one wishes, and preferably never shows its ugly face to the coder :-p
Which of course is no argument why Smalltalk code could not be displayed in a more programmer friendly way as a continuous block of text. There is no technical reason why source ranges in text box couldn't correspond to life method objects. Compared to other languages it is extremely tedious in Smalltalk to get an overview over a project, a package, or even a single class or to navigate between entities.
And yes, I really *really* miss a good, object oriented class browser!
Eclipse is pretty good, especially with the Java Browsing Perspective. Lukas -- Lukas Renggli www.lukas-renggli.ch