Thanks Sebastian, I was looking to find counter-views.

Did you notice you needed to put the 'Do it' in quotes, but not 'Evaluate' - so the latter seems more natural to me. Also 'Do it' needed a lot more supporting language than 'Evaluate'. For your examples...
   [1] zero extra words
   [2] five extra words
   [3] five extra words

Now this contrived example, but how would you write the following using 'Do it' ?
" In order, evaluate 'Grid new' , 'Cell new' and 'Grid new add: Cell new' "

I think it would be a bad idea to have both 'Evaluate it' and 'Do it' int he menus. It seems wrong to have two labels doing the same thing.

cheers -ben

Sebastian Sastre wrote:

Having evaluate wont hurt but I would NOT remove the traditional do it
For sentences with it, I would alternate between 

Evaluate 'Grid new' [1]

and remember that doIt is a message send and button/command like

"select 'Grid new' and 'Do it' from the menu" [2]

some smalltalk IDEs can say

"select 'Grid new' and press the 'Do it' button" [3]



sebastian

o/

On 15/07/2014, at 14:33, "Esteban A. Maringolo" <emaringolo@gmail.com> wrote:

I would use "Evaluate". And even go a little bit further, and propose
a rename of "DoIt" to "Evaluate".

The command line handler is "EvaluateCommandLineHandler".

Dolphin used "evaluate", it feels natural even for not-native English
speakers like me.

Also, REPL stands for read-EVAL-print-loop. So eval is an widely
accepted term to run a chunk of code.

Regards.
Esteban A. Maringolo


2014-07-15 14:20 GMT-03:00 Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com>:

Mostly I take for granted that "DoIt" has always been the way to evaluate
things with Smalltalk, however I find it awkward to use in writing a
tutorial.  Some examples... * After saving, select "Grid new" and "DoIt"  --
this sounds awkward, and even that you might need select the latter as well.
* After saving, "Grid new" DoIt.  -- doesn't read nice
* After saving, DoIt to "Grid new."  -- worst of all

I'd feel better writing something like this...
* After saving, evaluate "Grid new".
but "evaluate" is not an item in the menus.  I think actually many people
talk this way with the implicit convention that "evaluate" means "DoIt".

So first, does anyone have a good way to compose sentences using "DoIt".
Second, how evil would it be to change the menus from "DoIt" to "Evaluate"
and so avoid the implicit convention.

cheers -ben

<dolphin-evaluate.png>