Why did you develop Smalltalk Studio?
Simply put, to allow Smalltalk developers to work smarter and faster by making the Smalltalk development environment a better place!
The focus was on two main areas:
- Modernize and increase the functionality of the Smalltalk development environment
- Integrate software metrics into the development process.
Modernizing the development environment
For many years the Smalltalk development environment was way ahead of the tools available for others languages. Over the years, the development environments for other languages have improved while Smalltalk's browsers have remained much as they have always been. As a result, many languages now offer similar or better facilities, often presented in a more usable, less utilitarian manner.
We often find newcomers have as much trouble mastering the development environment as they do the Smalltalk language itself. The Smalltalk Studio environment is much easier to learn. It is modelled on the same design principles as the underlying operating system GUI, so if you know how to use the base system, you know how to use Smalltalk Studio. This allows newcomers to concentrate on learning the langauge, becoming productive more quickly.
Seasoned Smalltalkers learn to live with and work around many of the deficiencies inherent in the standard browsers. Smalltalk Studio removes these deficiencies, simplifies many tasks and adds a host of new functionality.
Both novice and seasoned Smalltalkers really do work smarter and faster with Smalltalk Studio.
Software Metrics
Software metrics measure the quality of your code in many different ways. Traditionally, metrics are measured after coding is "complete", during unit testing at best, during system testing at worst. The later the metrics are measured, the more expensive it is to fix problems.
There are more dependencies created the longer testing is delayed, and all of the dependents require retesting when problems are fixed. Problems are identified just as the schedules are getting really tight. What happens? Most often the easy, less important problems get fixed. The most critical ones are too expensive to fix and get left.
By fully integrating software metrics into the development cycle in a way that does not intrude on your normal working practises, Smalltalk Studio enables and encourages you to fix problems as they occur. Each time you update a method or declare a new class or variable, the relevant metrics are recalculated and displayed as part of the object's icon. Now you can see at a glance if there are problems and fix them immediately before there are any dependencies whatsoever. Instead of being onerous, metrics become a major tool to help you iteratively develop high quality code. |
