Introduction to STABLE

STABLE is the Smalltalk Apprenticeship-Based Learning Environment. It's a place for you to see projects that other students have done in the past -- successfully! Some tips and pointers:

• Each STABLE project is presented as a hierarchy of steps, with the major branches being OOA, OOD, OOP, and Reuse (in the future.) Each step is presented at varying levels of detail, starting with very little detail, working up to the whole detail of the step (all the code, all the detailed instruction, etc.)

• In addition to the steps themselves, there's lots of other information in STABLE, such as representations of the project (all the steps, or an OOA/OOD diagram), strategy for why to do a given step, repair information (where possible) about common errors in the project, etc.

• It's hard to get a handle on the layout of STABLE at first -- we know that. We keep trying to fix it, but it's hard. What works well for you in Week 1 of this course won't work well in Week 3 or Week 5. When I use STABLE, I rely on the representation of the whole project as my navigation. Your mileage may vary.

• STABLE is a good place to get an idea of what makes a good OOA and OOD. For example, Fish World has a really good OOA. In some of the student projects (P1, P2, P3 examples), I've scanned in their actual OOA/OOD diagrams (some as representations, some embedded in steps.) In general, the most-detail steps are what the students actually turned in.

• There are multiple solutions to the same problem, like building the basics of a spreadsheet or building a simulation. These are useful when you have to do something similar -- you get to pick and choose from the pieces that work best for you.