Interesting New Development w/o I-goddamn-DEs

[Owen Densmore]

During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems, I  
beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
   http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
   http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov

.. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being  
used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with  
tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better  
terminal in a variety of ways.
   http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

.. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
   http://www.macromates.com/
which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.  
TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text  
editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at times.)

Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they  
save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac  
friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac  
integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting but  
always with at least one fatal flaw).

Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax awareness  
and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and  
see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

[Owen Densmore]

Oops .. forgot to mention: there is also a Groovy candidate in the  
mix: Grails.

So it seems we've reached a watershed .. folks are just getting tired  
of very klunky web development systems and have figured out a good  
solution based on "agile" languages and simple web protocols.  PHP is  
certainly showing its age, and MySQL is starting to seem pretty  
boring.  Hopefully these new systems will bring in fresh ideas.

May they all succeed!  .. and be simple enough to not need IDEs.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org


On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:08 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems,  
> I beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
>   http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
>   http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
>
> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being  
> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with  
> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better  
> terminal in a variety of ways.
>   http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
>
> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
>   http://www.macromates.com/
> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and  
> jedit.  TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and  
> text editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky  
> at times.)
>
> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they  
> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac  
> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac  
> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting  
> but always with at least one fatal flaw).
>
> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax  
> awareness and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in  
> for a bit and see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
>
>     -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>

[Tim Densmore]

I've been thinking about stuff like this lately -- not IDEs, but the
value of learning tools that don't hep you in any way other than by
being a tool.  I was actually going to blog it.  I don't use any IDEs
(I don't code for the most part, so why would I?) but I use vi heavily,
and I absolutely love it.  I use it more or less daily, and have for at
least 4 years.  I'm pretty good with it, but probably still use less
than a third of it's power.  Most people I run into these days, though,
use nano or joe since they're a million times friendlier at first
blush.  Vi is a flippin PITA to learn, but I'm very very glad I did --
you'd have to look very hard to find a *nix w/o it installed.  If you
put me in front of a computer today, would I learn it?  I'm not sure I
would, to be honest.

Thank you,
Tim Densmore

-------------------------------

"There's an awful lot of people in the world that sneer at Segways
because other people are having fun. There must be something bad about
it. But I always tell people, that hey, these Segways are so
environmentally conscious. I carry four of them in the trunk of my
Hummer."

-The Woz
On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:44 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> Oops .. forgot to mention: there is also a Groovy candidate in the
> mix: Grails.
>
> So it seems we've reached a watershed .. folks are just getting tired
> of very klunky web development systems and have figured out a good
> solution based on "agile" languages and simple web protocols.  PHP is
> certainly showing its age, and MySQL is starting to seem pretty
> boring.  Hopefully these new systems will bring in fresh ideas.
>
> May they all succeed!  .. and be simple enough to not need IDEs.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
> On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:08 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>
>> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems,
>> I beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
>>   http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
>>   http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
>>
>> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
>> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
>> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
>> terminal in a variety of ways.
>>   http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
>>
>> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
>>   http://www.macromates.com/
>> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and
>> jedit.  TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and
>> text editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky
>> at times.)
>>
>> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
>> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
>> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
>> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting
>> but always with at least one fatal flaw).
>>
>> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax
>> awareness and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in
>> for a bit and see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
>>
>>     -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore
>> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>>
>>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org

[Giles Bowkett]

I've always been vi-centric but I've finally caved in and started to
learn emacs. The main thing I like about it is that its built-in
version of Tetris is better than the one on my cellphone.

On 11/22/05, Tim Densmore <tim at backspaces.net> wrote:

> I've been thinking about stuff like this lately -- not IDEs, but the
> value of learning tools that don't hep you in any way other than by
> being a tool.  I was actually going to blog it.  I don't use any IDEs
> (I don't code for the most part, so why would I?) but I use vi heavily,
> and I absolutely love it.  I use it more or less daily, and have for at
> least 4 years.  I'm pretty good with it, but probably still use less
> than a third of it's power.  Most people I run into these days, though,
> use nano or joe since they're a million times friendlier at first
> blush.  Vi is a flippin PITA to learn, but I'm very very glad I did --
> you'd have to look very hard to find a *nix w/o it installed.  If you
> put me in front of a computer today, would I learn it?  I'm not sure I
> would, to be honest.
>
> Thank you,
> Tim Densmore
>
> -------------------------------
>
> "There's an awful lot of people in the world that sneer at Segways
> because other people are having fun. There must be something bad about
> it. But I always tell people, that hey, these Segways are so
> environmentally conscious. I carry four of them in the trunk of my
> Hummer."
>
> -The Woz
> On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:44 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>
> > Oops .. forgot to mention: there is also a Groovy candidate in the
> > mix: Grails.
> >
> > So it seems we've reached a watershed .. folks are just getting tired
> > of very klunky web development systems and have figured out a good
> > solution based on "agile" languages and simple web protocols.  PHP is
> > certainly showing its age, and MySQL is starting to seem pretty
> > boring.  Hopefully these new systems will bring in fresh ideas.
> >
> > May they all succeed!  .. and be simple enough to not need IDEs.
> >
> >      -- Owen
> >
> > Owen Densmore
> > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >
> >
> > On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:08 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> >
> >> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems,
> >> I beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
> >>   http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
> >>   http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
> >>
> >> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
> >> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
> >> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
> >> terminal in a variety of ways.
> >>   http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
> >>
> >> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
> >>   http://www.macromates.com/
> >> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and
> >> jedit.  TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and
> >> text editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky
> >> at times.)
> >>
> >> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
> >> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
> >> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
> >> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting
> >> but always with at least one fatal flaw).
> >>
> >> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax
> >> awareness and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in
> >> for a bit and see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
> >>
> >>     -- Owen
> >>
> >> Owen Densmore
> >> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> > http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>

--
Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/

[John Pfersich]

I know that I'll be called a freak, but I'll take Smalltalk and its
environment any day over any other tool. Eclipse tries really hard to be
the IDE that all decent Smalltalks have (not GNU Smalltalk). I know that
it's slow for some everyday things, but simulations are easy in ST, and
Ruby's been said to be the language that's closest to Smalltalk. I'd agree,
but that doesn't mean it's close.

I know, Smalltalk is dead.

As for Ruby on Rails, I'd have to say after, a small amount of useage, that
the Seaside framework in Smalltalk is better. RoR is a bit of a bicycle
with training wheels; it tries to simplify the development of web apps, but
it does away with some of the complexity that is necessary for larger
projects.  Big, inclusive Java is intimidating to learn and ridiculously
complicated, but there has to be a happy medium between the Java
implementation and the Ruby implementation.

'nuf said.

At 09:08 PM 11/22/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:

>During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems, I
>beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
>    http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
>    http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
>
>.. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
>used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
>tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
>terminal in a variety of ways.
>    http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
>
>.. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
>    http://www.macromates.com/
>which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.
>TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text
>editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at times.)
>
>Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
>save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
>friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
>integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting but
>always with at least one fatal flaw).
>
>Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax awareness
>and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and
>see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
>
>      -- Owen
>
>Owen Densmore
>http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
>============================================================
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
>http://www.friam.org

[Giles Bowkett]

Fair's fair. I can't actually code in Smalltalk yet, but I've played
with it enough that I can say that VisualWorks Smalltalk's IDE puts
every Java IDE I've ever seen to shame.

On 11/23/05, John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:

> I know that I'll be called a freak, but I'll take Smalltalk and its
> environment any day over any other tool. Eclipse tries really hard to be
> the IDE that all decent Smalltalks have (not GNU Smalltalk). I know that
> it's slow for some everyday things, but simulations are easy in ST, and
> Ruby's been said to be the language that's closest to Smalltalk. I'd agree,
> but that doesn't mean it's close.
>
> I know, Smalltalk is dead.
>
> As for Ruby on Rails, I'd have to say after, a small amount of useage, that
> the Seaside framework in Smalltalk is better. RoR is a bit of a bicycle
> with training wheels; it tries to simplify the development of web apps, but
> it does away with some of the complexity that is necessary for larger
> projects.  Big, inclusive Java is intimidating to learn and ridiculously
> complicated, but there has to be a happy medium between the Java
> implementation and the Ruby implementation.
>
> 'nuf said.
>
> At 09:08 PM 11/22/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
> >During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty systems, I
> >beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
> >    http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
> >    http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
> >
> >.. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
> >used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
> >tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
> >terminal in a variety of ways.
> >    http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
> >
> >.. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
> >    http://www.macromates.com/
> >which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.
> >TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text
> >editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at times.)
> >
> >Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
> >save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
> >friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
> >integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting but
> >always with at least one fatal flaw).
> >
> >Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax awareness
> >and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and
> >see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
> >
> >      -- Owen
> >
> >Owen Densmore
> >http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >
> >
> >
> >============================================================
> >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> >Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> >http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://www.friam.org
>

--
Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/

[Owen Densmore]

Well, smalltalk is a bit different in that it operates in a complete  
environment of its own.  And its a bit hard to share code, or at  
least was years ago when I used it at Xerox.  But I presume Squeak  
and other newer versions have gotten past the "image" .. the big wad  
of smalltalk that was your current version and envrionment.

But, boy, I really agree that only APL came close to the speed of  
development of smalltalk.

But this does bring to mind an idea: build a java based system that  
had the same completeness of smalltalk, and you ship the whole  
"project".  Sorta build a great incestuous java IDE, possibly with a  
Groovy or similar scripting plugin, that was the same joy smalltalk was.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org


On Nov 23, 2005, at 4:12 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

> Fair's fair. I can't actually code in Smalltalk yet, but I've played
> with it enough that I can say that VisualWorks Smalltalk's IDE puts
> every Java IDE I've ever seen to shame.
>
> On 11/23/05, John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:
>> I know that I'll be called a freak, but I'll take Smalltalk and its
>> environment any day over any other tool. Eclipse tries really hard  
>> to be
>> the IDE that all decent Smalltalks have (not GNU Smalltalk). I  
>> know that
>> it's slow for some everyday things, but simulations are easy in  
>> ST, and
>> Ruby's been said to be the language that's closest to Smalltalk.  
>> I'd agree,
>> but that doesn't mean it's close.
>>
>> I know, Smalltalk is dead.
>>
>> As for Ruby on Rails, I'd have to say after, a small amount of  
>> useage, that
>> the Seaside framework in Smalltalk is better. RoR is a bit of a  
>> bicycle
>> with training wheels; it tries to simplify the development of web  
>> apps, but
>> it does away with some of the complexity that is necessary for larger
>> projects.  Big, inclusive Java is intimidating to learn and  
>> ridiculously
>> complicated, but there has to be a happy medium between the Java
>> implementation and the Ruby implementation.
>>
>> 'nuf said.
>>
>> At 09:08 PM 11/22/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty  
>>> systems, I
>>> beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
>>>    http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
>>>    http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
>>>
>>> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
>>> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
>>> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
>>> terminal in a variety of ways.
>>>    http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
>>>
>>> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
>>>    http://www.macromates.com/
>>> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.
>>> TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text
>>> editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at  
>>> times.)
>>>
>>> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
>>> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
>>> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
>>> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting  
>>> but
>>> always with at least one fatal flaw).
>>>
>>> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax  
>>> awareness
>>> and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and
>>> see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
>>>
>>>      -- Owen
>>>
>>> Owen Densmore
>>> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>>> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
>>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
>> www.friam.org
>>
>
>
> --
> Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
> http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> www.friam.org

[John Pfersich]

At 04:41 PM 11/23/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
>Well, smalltalk is a bit different in that it operates in a complete
>environment of its own.  And its a bit hard to share code, or at
>least was years ago when I used it at Xerox.  But I presume Squeak
>and other newer versions have gotten past the "image" .. the big wad
>of smalltalk that was your current version and envrionment.

Well, you could do fileouts into change sets back a while ago to share
code, and much more sophisticated methods exist now. Images are still
an"impediment" to code sharing. Personally, I look at the image as your own
private IDE that's optimized to the way you work. And I've yet to see an
IDE that has as many methods to do refactoring (as in Martin Fowler's
book). The refactoring browser has at least 47 different refactorings. I
gave up counting at that point. And the context sensitive menus (one of the
things they track is which refactorings are valid, and yes, the menus are
objects) are the most advanced I've ever seen.


>But, boy, I really agree that only APL came close to the speed of
>development of smalltalk.
>
>But this does bring to mind an idea: build a java based system that
>had the same completeness of smalltalk, and you ship the whole
>"project".  Sorta build a great incestuous java IDE, possibly with a
>Groovy or similar scripting plugin, that was the same joy smalltalk was.


Java is the pits, and Eclipse is the best that Erich Gramma could come up
with. It would be really difficult to approach the productivity that you
get with the Smalltalk environment. Besides the Smalltalk "IDE" is so much
faster than Eclipse, it's obscene.

Just another OO dig, xUnit testing started with Smalltalk.  Kent Beck wrote
a paper that described the process in the late '80s, and it was a Smalltalk
practice. At least, as far back as the early to mid '80s. That and pair
programming and most of extreme programming I consider to be normal
Smalltalk "coding" practices.

Sorry to go on, but programming and such have been putting food on the
table for over 30 years, and I've yet to see a programming environment
that's as good as Smalltalk over the past 20+ years. I became addicted to
Smalltalk in the early '80s.

>      -- Owen
>
>Owen Densmore
>http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>On Nov 23, 2005, at 4:12 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:
>
> > Fair's fair. I can't actually code in Smalltalk yet, but I've played
> > with it enough that I can say that VisualWorks Smalltalk's IDE puts
> > every Java IDE I've ever seen to shame.
> >
> > On 11/23/05, John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:
> >> I know that I'll be called a freak, but I'll take Smalltalk and its
> >> environment any day over any other tool. Eclipse tries really hard
> >> to be
> >> the IDE that all decent Smalltalks have (not GNU Smalltalk). I
> >> know that
> >> it's slow for some everyday things, but simulations are easy in
> >> ST, and
> >> Ruby's been said to be the language that's closest to Smalltalk.
> >> I'd agree,
> >> but that doesn't mean it's close.
> >>
> >> I know, Smalltalk is dead.
> >>
> >> As for Ruby on Rails, I'd have to say after, a small amount of
> >> useage, that
> >> the Seaside framework in Smalltalk is better. RoR is a bit of a
> >> bicycle
> >> with training wheels; it tries to simplify the development of web
> >> apps, but
> >> it does away with some of the complexity that is necessary for larger
> >> projects.  Big, inclusive Java is intimidating to learn and
> >> ridiculously
> >> complicated, but there has to be a happy medium between the Java
> >> implementation and the Ruby implementation.
> >>
> >> 'nuf said.
> >>
> >> At 09:08 PM 11/22/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
> >>> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty
> >>> systems, I
> >>> beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
> >>>    http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
> >>>    http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
> >>>
> >>> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
> >>> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
> >>> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
> >>> terminal in a variety of ways.
> >>>    http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
> >>>
> >>> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
> >>>    http://www.macromates.com/
> >>> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.
> >>> TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text
> >>> editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at
> >>> times.)
> >>>
> >>> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
> >>> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
> >>> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
> >>> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting
> >>> but
> >>> always with at least one fatal flaw).
> >>>
> >>> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax
> >>> awareness
> >>> and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and
> >>> see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
> >>>
> >>>      -- Owen
> >>>
> >>> Owen Densmore
> >>> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ============================================================
> >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> >>> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> >>> http://www.friam.org
> >>
> >>
> >> ============================================================
> >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> >> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> >> www.friam.org
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
> > http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> > www.friam.org
>
>
>============================================================
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
>Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
>http://www.friam.org

[Robert Holmes-2]

I always like the idea of increased productivity so John's comments got me
googling Smalltalk and squeak. And after an hour browsing I realise that I
Just Don't Get It. Why no .exes? I can see that this isn't an issue if I'm
writing code to carry out a particular task for myself (e.g. client wants
result of analysis, doesn't need the code) or if I'm swapping code with
other Smalltalk types, but what if I actually want to give something to a
client that they can actually rollout and run? How - for example - would I
deploy a desktop app to a couple of hundred end users at a client site?

Robert

On 11/23/05, John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:

>
> At 04:41 PM 11/23/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
> >Well, smalltalk is a bit different in that it operates in a complete
> >environment of its own.  And its a bit hard to share code, or at
> >least was years ago when I used it at Xerox.  But I presume Squeak
> >and other newer versions have gotten past the "image" .. the big wad
> >of smalltalk that was your current version and envrionment.
>
> Well, you could do fileouts into change sets back a while ago to share
> code, and much more sophisticated methods exist now. Images are still
> an"impediment" to code sharing. Personally, I look at the image as your
> own
> private IDE that's optimized to the way you work. And I've yet to see an
> IDE that has as many methods to do refactoring (as in Martin Fowler's
> book). The refactoring browser has at least 47 different refactorings. I
> gave up counting at that point. And the context sensitive menus (one of
> the
> things they track is which refactorings are valid, and yes, the menus are
> objects) are the most advanced I've ever seen.
>
>
> >But, boy, I really agree that only APL came close to the speed of
> >development of smalltalk.
> >
> >But this does bring to mind an idea: build a java based system that
> >had the same completeness of smalltalk, and you ship the whole
> >"project".  Sorta build a great incestuous java IDE, possibly with a
> >Groovy or similar scripting plugin, that was the same joy smalltalk was.
>
>
> Java is the pits, and Eclipse is the best that Erich Gramma could come up
> with. It would be really difficult to approach the productivity that you
> get with the Smalltalk environment. Besides the Smalltalk "IDE" is so much
> faster than Eclipse, it's obscene.
>
> Just another OO dig, xUnit testing started with Smalltalk.  Kent Beck
> wrote
> a paper that described the process in the late '80s, and it was a
> Smalltalk
> practice. At least, as far back as the early to mid '80s. That and pair
> programming and most of extreme programming I consider to be normal
> Smalltalk "coding" practices.
>
> Sorry to go on, but programming and such have been putting food on the
> table for over 30 years, and I've yet to see a programming environment
> that's as good as Smalltalk over the past 20+ years. I became addicted to
> Smalltalk in the early '80s.
>
>
> >      -- Owen
> >
> >Owen Densmore
> >http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> >
> >
> >On Nov 23, 2005, at 4:12 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:
> >
> > > Fair's fair. I can't actually code in Smalltalk yet, but I've played
> > > with it enough that I can say that VisualWorks Smalltalk's IDE puts
> > > every Java IDE I've ever seen to shame.
> > >
> > > On 11/23/05, John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:
> > >> I know that I'll be called a freak, but I'll take Smalltalk and its
> > >> environment any day over any other tool. Eclipse tries really hard
> > >> to be
> > >> the IDE that all decent Smalltalks have (not GNU Smalltalk). I
> > >> know that
> > >> it's slow for some everyday things, but simulations are easy in
> > >> ST, and
> > >> Ruby's been said to be the language that's closest to Smalltalk.
> > >> I'd agree,
> > >> but that doesn't mean it's close.
> > >>
> > >> I know, Smalltalk is dead.
> > >>
> > >> As for Ruby on Rails, I'd have to say after, a small amount of
> > >> useage, that
> > >> the Seaside framework in Smalltalk is better. RoR is a bit of a
> > >> bicycle
> > >> with training wheels; it tries to simplify the development of web
> > >> apps, but
> > >> it does away with some of the complexity that is necessary for larger
> > >> projects.  Big, inclusive Java is intimidating to learn and
> > >> ridiculously
> > >> complicated, but there has to be a happy medium between the Java
> > >> implementation and the Ruby implementation.
> > >>
> > >> 'nuf said.
> > >>
> > >> At 09:08 PM 11/22/2005 -0700, Owen Densmore wrote:
> > >>> During the recent conversations about ruby and other nifty
> > >>> systems, I
> > >>> beamed into the various "build xxx in nnn minutes" flicks:
> > >>>    http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov
> > >>>    http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov
> > >>>
> > >>> .. as a Mac user I was quite surprised at the nifty tools being
> > >>> used!  One is iTerm, a more hacker friendly Term replacement with
> > >>> tabs for sessions, .. quite nice.  It also seems to be a better
> > >>> terminal in a variety of ways.
> > >>>    http://iterm.sourceforge.net/
> > >>>
> > >>> .. but the HUGE winner is a new text editor, TextMate
> > >>>    http://www.macromates.com/
> > >>> which is very close to two wonderful linux systems: nedit and jedit.
> > >>> TextMate actually has found the sweet-spot between IDEs and text
> > >>> editors.  (jEdit has done pretty well here but is a bit flaky at
> > >>> times.)
> > >>>
> > >>> Editor's note: I think most IDEs take more time to learn than they
> > >>> save in development time!  I've used Idea .. which was not Mac
> > >>> friendly (weird non-standard file dialogs), Eclipse (nice Mac
> > >>> integration but very, very hard to learn), and Netbeans (tempting
> > >>> but
> > >>> always with at least one fatal flaw).
> > >>>
> > >>> Note how well the movies show the use of Ruby/Python syntax
> > >>> awareness
> > >>> and command/template completion.  I'm going to jump in for a bit and
> > >>> see if it replaces my current jEdit on Mac.
> > >>>
> > >>>      -- Owen
> > >>>
> > >>> Owen Densmore
> > >>> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> ============================================================
> > >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > >>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > >>> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> > >>> http://www.friam.org
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> ============================================================
> > >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > >> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> > >> www.friam.org
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
> > > http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> > > Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at http://
> > > www.friam.org
> >
> >
> >============================================================
> >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> >Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> >http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> Wed Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, maps, etc. at
> http://www.friam.org
>

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[Gary Schiltz-3]

I never did Smalltalk for a living, but it used to be a hobby for me. In
all flavors of Smalltalk that I was familiar with, there was always some
way of deploying. In most cases, you actually shipped the whole program
and environment ("image"), but could strip out unwanted parts of the
class library such as the development tools. As far as sharing code, you
could export code as text files, and some versions worked with a shared
central code repository (there was an object (source code) management
system called "Envy" that was part of one of the major implementations -
probably ParcPlace Smalltalk).

On the related topic of IDEs, I must admit that I can hardly get along
without them now. Even though I've used 'vi' for the better part of 25
years, I really have gotten much more productive using Eclipse. It is
based on VisualAge for Java, which was based on VisualAge for Smalltalk,
which was based at least loosely on ParcPlace Smalltalk (I don't
remember the name of the product any more), which was based at least
loosely on the Lisp machines of the early 1980s (e.g. the Xerox 1108).

// Gary

Robert Holmes wrote:

> I always like the idea of increased productivity so John's comments got
> me googling Smalltalk and squeak. And after an hour browsing I realise
> that I Just Don't Get It. Why no .exes? I can see that this isn't an
> issue if I'm writing code to carry out a particular task for myself
> (e.g. client wants result of analysis, doesn't need the code) or if I'm
> swapping code with other Smalltalk types, but what if I actually want to
> give something to a client that they can actually rollout and run? How -
> for example - would I deploy a desktop app to a couple of hundred end
> users at a client site?
>
> Robert

[Giles Bowkett]

> Just another OO dig, xUnit testing started with Smalltalk.  Kent Beck wrote
> a paper that described the process in the late '80s, and it was a Smalltalk
> practice. At least, as far back as the early to mid '80s. That and pair
> programming and most of extreme programming I consider to be normal
> Smalltalk "coding" practices.

Google agrees with you. You can't google Smalltalk without seeing jobs
ads. The ads all mention XP. I have a rant about this on my web site.
It's a bit loony and ranty, as rants are, but part of the whole thing
involved combing literally every page of Google's corporate site in
search of a single word of Smalltalk content. Long story short, they
use Smalltalk searches to recruit their XP coders. It's kind of a
catch-22, though, because although they definitely hire Smalltalk
coders, they definitely hire those Smalltalk coders to code Java.

Anyway I'm pretty sure Fowler mentions Beck's Smalltalk refactoring
work in "Refactoring," in fact I think Beck wrote Smalltalk's
refactoring browser.

--
Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/