Re: What is wrong with OO ?

[Tansel Ersavas <tansel@rase.com>]

Tom Bushell wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 17 Dec 1996 00:45:47 -0800, Tansel Ersavas <tansel@deep.net>
> wrote:
> 
> >I think, we can now show people how visual programming can really bump
> >up their productivity. It also accelerates learning, and promotes more
> >high level thinking. Visual programming is to textual programming what
> >is textual programming to assembly language.
> 
> Good analogy.  Although this may sound like marketing hype, my
> exposure to _true_ visual programming tools (ie the Prograph language)
> leads me to believe that Tansel is not just talking through his hat.
> Sounds like Snowball does many of the things I've been advocating in
> other posts to this thread.

We are glad to see our ideas are shared by professionals. I personally
believe in visual programming, even though I am still a command-line
person from time to time, especially in Unix. But with the right tool,
even if we don't spend the majority of our time in the tool, we can
achieve a lot, as I observed it in the case with Snowball. I also find
it very useful as a documentation tool. In many projects, even though
documentation is kept in high $$ CASE tools, it is practically
impossible to reverse engineer the entire system and regenerate the
document every time documentation is required. Snowball generates this
documentation every time directly from the source, because Smalltalk is
used as a specification and a repository for all the documentation
information. So it is very useful even for people who won't do any
visual programming, but want to have access to the visual views of their
system at any time on demand, such as presentations. 

Most visual tools limit us do things their own way. They look nice in
demos, but when we start using them in real life, we feel limited. That
is one of the issue we wanted to address clearly in Snowball. We wanted
Snowball to be a non-intrusive tool.  When it is invoked, Snowball will
understand your work without forcing you to any special format, or
restrictions. It is available within a matter of seconds, and after you
have made your changes, or even while you are doing changes, you can
return to the Smalltalk environment and do what you want there.

> So, when will Snowball be available?  What Smalltalks does it run
> with?  Cost?

Snowball Rapid Systems Engineering Tool is currently available for
purchase from our site for VSE only. We do not promote it as yet,
because we are waiting on some non-technical issues to be resolved. We
will announce it either late December, or very early January. We plan to
come out with ST/V STExpress version, followed by IBM VA, and VW.

Costwise, we are determined to keep it as down as possible. Our aim is
to make Snowball available to every OO enthusiast at a reasonable price.
Our current target is for most versions, the basic edition without
source should be under $200, and the developers edition with source and
meta-tools for developing your own extensions-graphical notations with
extensive documentation should be under $600. If we can release a
STExpress edition, we want to keep it under $100.
 
> Tansel, if you need a beta tester for the MS-Windows version, keep me
> in mind.  :-)

We will certainly do that, Tom. I'll contact you via e-mail after the
new year's day.
 
> -Tom

Tansel Ersavas
Designer and Developer of Snowball Rapid Systems Engineering Tool
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