Re: AS verbosity and ease(?) of learning
Re: AS verbosity and ease(?) of learning
- Subject: Re: AS verbosity and ease(?) of learning
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 11:45:39 +0100
Lachlan Deck wrote:
>
> There's plenty of
>
> AS-specific books telling you how to open folders, but not one - as far
>
> as I know - that introduces algorithms, OOP, etc.
>
>
Yes, this was my frustration - how on earth...as the dictionary's
>
references were far from helpful at times.
App/osax dictionaries - worst place imaginable for learning _how to do_
anything. To be fair, I don't think they were ever designed with this in
mind - but it's still a great pity they weren't.
Let us hope that all those mysterious NDA'd developments to AppleScript
that were announced at the WWDC include the joyful news that the current,
restricted, overdue-for-retirement dictionary format is _finally_ on its
way out, to be replaced by something Shiny New that can include summaries,
extended descriptions, code examples, etc, etc. and all the other stuff
that'd make dictionaries _Incredibly Useful_.
>
But, the following site goes a long way to explaining the stuff I didn't
>
know about for AppleScript that I knew in principle how to do (from C++,
>
Java etc):
The AppleScript Language Guide, aka ASLG. Wonderfully comprehensive -
"Everything you ever wanted to know about AppleScript but were afraid to
ask." Not, however, a teaching guide by any stretch of the imagination.
Learn your basic principles somewhere else (tutorials, FAQs, etc) and then
use the ASLG as a reference for polishing up your detailed knowledge of AS
and answering questions when you get stuck on something specific. It's
terrific for that, and everyone should have a copy for that reason alone.
>
Now, the other tricky bit I suspect is that it takes time for people to
>
understand OOP.
>
And so the above address while very helpful, may not be aimed at a
>
newbie programmer.
If there's one thing the ASLG is absolutely, fundamentally guaranteed NEVER
to do, it's learn anyone a single ounce of OO Design Theory. But again:
once you've learned the principles somewhere else, the ASLG is very good
for helping you translate those concepts into their AS equivalents.
Not that many ASers will ever need a working knowledge of Object Oriented
Programming [1] - basic structured programming techniques are plenty
sufficient for many AS-based projects. Still, a basic grasp of "What
Objects Are And What They Do" _is_ useful when getting to grips with Finder
scripting, etc. I think this could be explained in very general, abstract,
non-scary terms specifically for folks who wish to manipulate application
object models whilst still working in purely procedural code. (Question:
does such an explanation exist?)
Cheers,
has
[1] Though it's an incredibly good idea to learn it if you start designing
big, complex projects.
--
http://www.barple.connectfree.co.uk/ -- The Little Page of Beta AppleScripts
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