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The exploration workspace: interleaving the implementation and use of plain objects in smalltalk

Published: 09 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

When engaging in exploratory programming, the activities of exploring, understanding, implementing, and using objects of a particular domain should ideally be tightly interwoven to allow for short feedback cycles and continuous progress towards desired levels of comprehension and knowledge. However, when working with plain data objects using state-of-the-art development tools, programmers often have to resort to a more sequential workflow in which they first need to understand the model, then implement it, and only afterwards can start using and exploring it.
We propose the exploration workspace tool which enables programmers to interleave these activities to better support the exploration of objects they are not fully acquainted with. We achieve this by trying to tolerate deviations of the assumed protocol from the protocol actually provided by the objects the programmers wish to interact with. For that, we strive for non-intrusive tool support that helps to semi-automatically build up the vocabulary preferred in interactions. We also suggest to consolidate both domain object implementations and exploration scripts once learning progressed.
Through an example scenario, we will illustrate various resolution strategies applied during the implementation of a geographical map showing social media posts and photos.

References

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Adele Goldberg and David Robson. 1983. Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, USA.
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Daniel Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, John Maloney, Scott Wallace, and Alan Kay. 1997. Back to the Future: The Story of Squeak, a Practical Smalltalk Written in Itself. In Smalltalk and Exploratory Programming, Vol. 32. ACM, (318 to: 326).
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Patrick Rein, Robert Hirschfeld, Stefan Lehmann, and Jens Lincke. 2016. Compatibility Layers for Interface Mediation at Run-time. In Companion Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity (MODULARITY Companion 2016). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 113–118.
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David Sandberg. 1988. Smalltalk and Exploratory Programming. SIGPLAN Not. 23, 10 (1988), (85 to: 92).
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Jason Trenouth. 1991. A Survey of Exploratory Software Development. Comput. J. 34, 2 (1991), (153 to: 163).
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Princeton University. 2010. "About WordNet". (2010). 2 www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/research_school 3 www.hpi.de/en/research/design-thinking-research-program Abstract 1 Comprehension, Implementation, and Usage in Exploration 2 The Exploration Workspace 2.1 Features 2.2 Example: Building a Social Media Map 3 Implementation 4 Conclusion and Future Work Acknowledgments References

Cited By

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  • (2023)Time-Awareness in Object Exploration Tools: Toward In Situ Omniscient DebuggingProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3622758.3622892(89-102)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Neurodesign: The Biology, Psychology, and Engineering of Creative Thinking and InnovationBrain, Decision Making and Mental Health10.1007/978-3-031-15959-6_29(617-659)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2023

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cover image ACM Other conferences
Programming '18: Companion Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming
April 2018
244 pages
ISBN:9781450355131
DOI:10.1145/3191697
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 09 April 2018

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Author Tags

  1. Smalltalk
  2. Squeak
  3. exploratory programming
  4. live programming
  5. tool support

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  • (2023)Time-Awareness in Object Exploration Tools: Toward In Situ Omniscient DebuggingProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/3622758.3622892(89-102)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Neurodesign: The Biology, Psychology, and Engineering of Creative Thinking and InnovationBrain, Decision Making and Mental Health10.1007/978-3-031-15959-6_29(617-659)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2023

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