TITLE: A Quick Follow-Up on What Next
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 13, 2022  2:02 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
<a href="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2022-01.html#e2022-01-04T14_54_04.htm">
   My recent post</a>
 on what language or tool I should dive into next got
<a href="https://twitter.com/wallingf/status/1478490578216267776">
   some engagement on Twitter</a>,
 with many helpful suggestions.  Thank you all!  So I figure I should post
 a quick update to report what I'm thinking at this point.

 In that post, I mentioned JavaScript and Pharo by name, though I was open
 to other ideas.  Many folks pointed out the practical value of
 JavaScript, especially in a context where many of my students know and
 use it.  Others offered lots of good ideas in the Smalltalk vein, both
 Pharo and several lighter-weight Squeaks.  A couple of folks recommended
 Glamorous Toolkit (GToolkit), from
<a href="https://twitter.com/feenkcom">
   @feenkcom</a>,
 which I had not heard of before.

 I took to mind several of the suggestions that commenters made about the
 how to think about making the decision.  For example, there is more
 overhead to studying Pharo and GToolkit than JavaScript or one of the
 lighter-weight Squeaks.  Choosing one of the latter would make it
 easier to tinker.  I think some of these comments had students in mind,
 but they are true even for my own study during the academic semester.
 Once I get into a term (my course begins one week from today), my
 attention gets pulled in many directions for fifteen or sixteen weeks.
 Being able to quickly switch contexts when jumping into a coding session
 means that I can jump more often and more productively.

 Also, as
<a href="https://twitter.com/glv/status/1478524374135226374">
   Glenn Vanderburg pointed out</a>,
 JavaScript and Pharo aren't likely to teach me much new.  I have a lot
 of background with Smalltalk and, in many ways, JavaScript is just
 another language.  The main benefit of working with either would be
 practical, not educational.

 GToolkit might teach me something, though.  As I looked into GToolkit,
 it became more tempting.  The code is Smalltalk, because it is
 implemented in Pharo.  But the project has a more ambitious vision of
 software that is "moldable": easier to understand, easier to figure out.
 GToolkit builds on Smalltalk's image in the direction of a computational
 notebook, which is an idea I've long wanted to explore.  (I feel a
 little guilty that I haven't look more into the work that
<a href="https://twitter.com/dschmudde">
   David Schm&uuml;dde</a>
 has done developing a notebook in Clojure.)
 GToolkit sounds like a great way for me to open several doors at once
 and learn something new.  To do it justice, though, I need more time
 and focus to get started.

 So I have decided on a two-pronged approach.  I will explore JavaScript
 during the spring semester.  This will teach me more about a language
 and ecosystem that are central to many of my students' lives.  There is
 little overhead to picking it up and playing with it, even during the
 busiest weeks of the term.  I can have a little fun and maybe make some
 connections to my programming languages course along the way.  Then for
 summer, I will turn my attention to GToolkit, and perhaps a bigger
 research agenda.

 I started playing with JavaScript on Tuesday.  Having just read
<a href="https://leancrew.com/all-this/2022/01/wordle-letters/">
   a blog post</a>
 on scripting to compute letter frequencies in Perl, I implemented some
 of the same ideas in JavaScript.  For the most part, I worked just as
 my students do: relying on vague memories of syntax and semantics and,
 when that failed, searching about for examples online.

 A couple of hours working like this refreshed my memory on the syntax I
 knew from before and introduced me to some features that were new to me.
 It took a few minutes to re-internalize the need for those pesky
 semicolons at the end of every line...
 
 The resulting code is not much more verbose than Perl.  I drifted pretty
 naturally to using functional programming style, as you might imagine,
 and it felt reasonably comfortable.  Pretty soon I was thinking more
 about the tradeoff between clarity and efficiency in my code than about
 syntax, which is a good sign.  I did run into one of JavaScript's gotchas:
 I used <tt>for...in</tt> twice instead of <tt>for...of</tt> and was
 surprised by the resulting behavior.  Like any programmer, I banged my
 head on wall for a few minutes and then recovered.  But I have to admit
 that I had fun.  I like to program.

 I'm not sure what I will write next, or when I will move into the
 browser and play with interface elements.  Suggestions are welcome!

 I am pretty sure, though, that I'll start writing unit tests soon.
 I used SUnit briefly and have a lot of experience with JUnit.  Is
 JSUnit a thing?
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