I don’t have much spare time to spend on non-compensated Smalltalk work. Sure, I enjoy coding with Smalltalk but nowadays I have returned to my original passion which is playing the guitar. My quota is a minimum 10.5 hours of guitar per week although it is difficult to consistently achieve that. Then there is walking the dog for at least an hour per day if not more. I am also married , need I say more. So I choose my pet Smalltalk projects very carefully. I have a few active ideas. However, when I found at that Terry Raymond had built a core Traits engine that was just too much to resist. Why?

• I believe Traits has the potential to be quite useful.
• I knew Terry would have something substantial that I could sink my teeth into.
• I did not have a presenter scheduled for the NYCST March meeting. That usually means that I have to try to put something together quick.
• I have been feeling guilty about not contributing to the community with product and this seemed like a great chance.

So sometime in February I decided that I was going to do my best to add StORE and RefactoringBrowser integration to VW Traits and to present the work at the March meeting for NYC Smalltalk. It was close but that is what I did.

The presentation I thought went well. Terry Raymond which lives about 4 hours away up in New England decided to come and visit us which was a definite plus. The discussions at the meeting and then later at the bar went great. I think we gathered some nice ideas on how to extend Traits and make it even more powerful.

I won’t bore you all with any further detail. Those so inclined can start by checking out the Traits section on our wiki.

Finally, I have published the work to the Cincom Public Repository. Load bundle: ‘VW Traits Development 3’.

I would be very much interested in feedback as I am sure so would Terry Raymond.