A browser for incremental programming

Much of the elegance and power of Smalltalk comes from its programming environment and tools. First introduced more than 20 years ago, the Smalltalk browser enables programmers to "home in" on particular methods using a hierarchy of manually-defined classifications. By its nature, this classification scheme says a lot about the desired state of the code, but little about the actual state of the code as it is being developed. We have extended the Smalltalk browser with dynamically computed virtual categories that dramatically improve the browser's support for incremental programming. We illustrate these improvements by example, and describe the algorithms used to compute the virtual categories efficiently. Key words: Smalltalk browser, incremental programming, intentional programming, method reachability, requires set.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: CL
• Authors: Nathanael Schärli, Andrew P. Black
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, CL 2004, Programming, Smalltalk Browser, Virtual Categories