Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: carlg@world.std.com (Carl E Gundel)
Subject: Re: [ALL] The danger of Smalltalk
Message-ID: <DxurI1.41C@world.std.com>
Organization: The World, Public Access Internet, Brookline, MA
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References: <AAm9QFoS63@rrg.msk.su>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 01:15:36 GMT
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Vsevolod Ilyushchenko (SimonF@rrg.msk.su) wrote:
: Unfortunately, I am losing the big picture. I forget about all the
: complicated interconnections of the different parts of my program.
: I try to write code in such a way that when I make a change, the places
: that are dependent upon it will at once blow up in my face with
: 'self error:' and 'self halt'. Most of them do. I read the code, identify
: the problem and fix it. Locally, at least. This frenzy of changes sometimes
: consumes me so that for the life of mine I cannot tell how I fixed
: the bug ten minutes ago or even what that bug was.

It sounds like you don't have a clean design.  Factor things carefully 
and thoroughly (this takes experience).  Pick your class names, variable 
names and method names very carefully as they have a profound impact on 
the reusefulness and maintainability of your code.  Read Leo Brodie's 
book Thinking FORTH.

: What's worse, I have noticed that my ability to understand math has
: deterioriated during this last year. I think that math requires
: a good deal of thinking about the matter before you start doing something,
: and hardly tolerates the 'prototype-then-think' approach.

The 'prototype-then-think' approach as you put it seems to be a popular 
methodology in Smalltalk, but it is just as wrong in Smalltalk as it is 
with any programming language IMHO.  Good planning and design are 
essential when developing in Smalltalk.

Carl


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
 Carl Gundel  carlg@world.std.com  Shoptalk Systems  508-872-5315
 author of Liberty BASIC, a 1996 PC Magazine Awards Finalist!
 http://world.std.com/~carlg/basic.html
