posted 21 August 2010 11:30            

Any suggestions? (not to the meaning of 'i', but to the message learning phase)

posted 21 August 2010 15:40            

Take this expression which comes from p. 129:
{(1 to: 16) collect: [:i | !Amp suffix2: i]}

Now when I got to this point in the book I diverted and did a crash course in Smalltalk- nothing too difficult for me to understand BUT... when I learn a new language I use a dictionary. Where is the Smalltalk dictionary? There are thousands of Messages! The appendix goes some way towards this. For example I was able to find 'collect' and a clear explanation. But what about....

What does 'suffix2' mean?
What does 'i' mean?

Now I can guess...it's apparent from the context...but that's a bad way to learn. What I need is a look-up, where I can quickly find the term/message and its explanation, so I can then unravel the code.
I'm not a computer programmer but I'm hungry to learn but it's very frustrating. What am I missing?
Thanks for any help.

posted 21 August 2010 15:50            

{(1 to: 16) collect: [:i | !Amp suffix2: i]}

the variable or block argument 'i' is given the values: 1, 2, 3, .. 16

The result of evaluating this expression is an array of 16 values, one corresponding to each of the values assigned to the variable 'i'.

To give a simpler example (note that the variable can be ANY variable; it does not have to be i):

{(1 to: 3) collect: [ :k | k * 2]}

would evaluate to the Array:

#(2 4 6)

posted 21 August 2010 17:16            

This might be overkill, since you would probably only be using full-fledged Smalltalk in Script objects, but you might pick up a Smalltalk introductory book. I have "On To Smalltalk" by Patrick Henry Winston, which I find to be good. I've never actually read it cover-to-cover though.

It's written for a completely different language, but I also found the "Getting Started with Processing" book by Casey Reas and Ben Fry to be good at introducing programming concepts like for loops (where you'll see that kind of construct with the "i" variable). Again, maybe overkill since you are learning Kyma and not Processing. But I pretty much did read this book cover to cover and got a lot out of it. But I would wait to do this until you really want to do more programming.

The beauty of Kyma is that you can do things without having to do much "real" programming - you usually only need to be able to manipulate some expressions that will calculate some parameter fields for you.

One thing that does get confusing at first (and sometimes still gets me) is that there is a difference between Smalltalk and Capytalk. Capytalk is unique to Kyma and is constructed on top of Smalltalk. Sometimes there are different expressions in Capytalk than what you would use in Smalltalk - "true:" (capytalk) vs. "ifTrue:" (smalltalk), for example.

The appendices in the Kyma X Revealed will get you started, but for expressions that have been added since the book was written, you should look at the Downloads page on the Tweaky:
http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bin/view/Know/KymaXDownloads

Good luck and have fun.

Phil

[Edit: Sorry, the Processing book I read is called "Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists." The one I mentioned above is their new book.]

posted 21 August 2010 17:26            

Phil that's exactly the kind of information I need. At this moment in my curve it is taking me about 4 hours to understand each line of parameter code in the book. I can see this will get better and I am excited of the possibilities.