Self.... oh self.... poor dead fish.

More seriously, I think that it is very important to integrate object-oriented concepts with object-oriented programming. It almost becomes a model for programmers. If a good object-oriented model exists and it is viewed in a concrete fashion, a programmer will immediately think along those lines. Even introducing object-oriented programming by having people model the real world helps. I am definitely a firm believer of object-oriented environments.

On a totally separate thought, I found the paper a rather interesting idea and it sounds like fun to program in. Funness is good.

One problem that I see with this environment is the same problem I see with some people's view of programming. To some, the procedural paradigm and a shell are the best things in the world. This environment will certainly appeal to some and not appeal to others. (It's attractive and some people don't like attractiveness.)

This article makes me wonder how the average person reacts to visualization. In the previous article, they made notes as to different people's reactions but I wonder how this would come across. I, for one, love visualization but is visualization detrimental to some? How could one test that hypothesis? Would more visualization-style systems attract more people? (That would be good.)

While I also think that visualizing the objects and references and the like can be useful, it can also get distracting. Not knowing a lot about the environment it's difficult to know how easy it is to use. But an environment is useless in my opinion if it takes a while to learn. The interface should be intuitive to anyone who has general knowledge of OO design and programming (and be helpful to those who are learning it) but it also needs to be able to give access to code in a standard shell/editor format. Sometimes it's easiest to jump around the files and play with the nitty-gritty rather than having the attractive interface on top. The perfect environment in my opinion is one that allows you to go back and forth between the visual view and the code view, being able to add and subtract things along the way and have the environment keep up with you on both fronts. That may be confusing, and it sounds like a tall order in any case :)

I just wanted to lodge a disagreement that an environment is useless if it takes a while to learn. Anything of reasonable complexity (and often power) takes time to become accostomed to. By your argument, Unix is completely useless when compared to MacOS. Very powerful tools (such as Object Oriented Programming, I might add) take a while to learn, but give you trade-offs such as flexibility, speed, and power.