Program Testing and Persistent Properties

[Alejandro Tejada]

on Sat, 7 Aug 2004
Bob Warren wrote:

[big snip]
> I tried making a variation of the "Hello
> World!" project and testing
> it before making a standalone.

> I documented this attempt at testing the project and
> recorded my confusions
> in an article at
> http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/article.htm .

You provided an invaluable review of the expectatives
of an user of other development platform when
first encounters RR.

I was a HyperCard user and the main inspiration
to keep up learning is/was the extraordinary
body of code and examples created by users
more advanced that me.

Eventually, i hope to add my own knowledge to
this already astounding collection of programs.

One of my biggest concern about the xtalk
platforms (HyperCard, SuperCard, MetaCard, RunRev,
Oracle Media objects, WinPlus, etc, etc...)
is the relative (or factual)isolation of their 
developers and the code they create.

My worst fear is that all that code, all that
isolated efforts will dissapear without trace...
without trace. 

Books, stacks, libraries, applications...
get forgotten and lost forever.

The oldest programmers in the xtalk community
could testify this, better than me.

How many stack or programs you remember have
seen that are not available anymore?

Before working in a project, do you ask yourself:

Did someone else had done this code before in the
X talk platform?
If so, 
Where could i see this code? 
And the errors produced while implementing some 
of the features?

A Pantechnicon for all XTalk code is needed
to answer these questions.

> If anyone has the patience to read through this
> illustrated story, would
> they please enlighten me as to the "higher purpose"
> of "persistent
> properties" when test-running a Rev project! (The
> meaning or "persistent
> properties" is abundantly clear in the article.)

For a while, i try to record all my errors while
programming, but as interesting as it sounds, for
me become a burden over the real task of programming.

So bugs in my code are squashed, cleaned and
forgotten,
not saved for a later study and dissection.

I feel that my errors could teach me a lot on my
thoughts patterns while programming, but first
i had to find an easier way to archive them for 
later study.

I congratulate you for following so closely your
activity while programming. If you could keep
this habit, you'll learn fast and you'll learn well.

About persistent properties, i could say you that
everything is persistent in RR, until you change it.

The only Non persistent object i'm aware are the
variables that get emptied when you close the 
development environment.

If you do not save the stack while closing it,
all the changes are gone too.


Keep up asking and learning with 
the helpful folks of this list!

al



=====
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http://www.geocities.com/capellan2000/


		
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