[Cuis-dev] About complexity in the face of the user

[Hilaire Fernandes]

Le 17/03/2024 à 22:22, ken.dickey at whidbey.com a écrit :
> My thought was to look at blocks languages 
> (Scratch/BYOB/GPBlocks/Blocky/..) and make a small blocks language 
> based on DrGeo construction semantics (objects, operations, 
> composition/extension).

Yes, may be. What I have in mind is how you will program a given model, 
not design it, but just make use of it by programming it. This will 
result in using both general programming instruction and dedicated ones 
to the model to interact with. The most obvious -- easy for us -- is to 
use the Smalltalk language, after all this what it was designed for. Of 
course you can start to parametrize the model, but this is not really 
programming.

DrGeo is my test bed to explore these ideas:  the DrGeo Smalltalk sketch 
editor (you see picture in my previous email), with its dedicated editor 
and resulting view, then my exploring of debugging with the mini-debugger.

Then you can wonder, could you do the same with tile programming in 
Cuis. Tile programming should at least give the same level of generality 
you can have with Smalltalk. But of course tile programming ease the 
discoverability of the programming capabilities: the user literally see 
the programming instructions as tiles.

What I am really interested is how you will go beyond DrGeo, and have 
programming capabilities for any kind of model written in Smalltalk, 
then the user can male these models to interact with each other.

Yeah, this really sound as reinventing Etoys, but this is not what I am 
interested by. My metaphor is more like a notebook where you handwrite 
notes and insert model a user will have scripted (with Smalltalk or 
tile), alternatively the user will retrieve programmed model  from a 
library of scripts. Think about a set of elementary sketches 
representing different king of interactive parallelogram. You could why 
would you need script for, it could be just DrGeo sketch. Well what is 
nice about script is your can learn from, and it may be easier to modify 
and to extend.

I am glad you are exploring the NuScratch.

Hilaire

>
> There was a Scratch done some time back for the RaspBerry Pi called 
> NuScratch, so we should be able to get the Smalltalk source code (yes, 
> source file attached):
>
> https://map.squeak.org/package/b4fe8b70-1fba-43f2-ac42-b487e092a0d4
>
> Right, also, there is a NuScratch download for RaspBerry Pi which 
> works on my RasPi 4.
>
> As the Scratch code has strategies for dealing with errors, and one 
> should be able to present/debug scripts in block format.  I note a 
> ScratchProcess, ScratchEvent, ScratchStackFrame, ... so looks like 
> many step/debug/recover details worked out.  Just a small matter of 
> porting. ;^)
>
> Hey, and we have much better graphics!  🙂 

-- 
GNU Dr. Geo
http://gnu.org/s/dr-geo/
http://gnu-drgeo.blogspot.com/