I wrote:
It certainly would be nice for the corrector to change
iszero -> isZero
but it would be nicer, still for it to correct:
expandCollection -> growCollection
or
emitFourBytes -> emit4Bytes
sort of a thesaures based corrector.
Yeah, exactly what I wanted all those years:
A Do-What-I-Mean-Not-What-I-Say approach to programming.
The ideal thing would be a syntax checker and corrector which would generate working programs even if I just rolled my head on the keyboard. :-)
Forget Do-What-I-Mean... press the Do-WantI-Want button. (It's labeled "on/off" or "0/1" on most computers) Trust me... It's really what you want. :-)
I'm not saying that those little helpful tricks such as spell checking, automatic declaration of variables etc. are bad. They're actually quite useful, and whenever I'm forced to use VisualAge at a customer project I yearn for the helpfulness of Smalltalk-80 derived system such as VisualWorks or Squeak.
Likewise, I'm sure.
So please, if you think you have a great idea that would make programming a breeze, just implement it in Squeak, and see whether it really helps. It's not that difficult. But please stop the endless discussion...
I've found that it does help, mostly in a browsing context, though the system is not-ready-for-prime-time. (but then neither is Squeak).
Please do not ask people to stop discussions that you personally find uninteresting. I don't like reading newbie questions, or bug fixes for systems I dont use, but that's why we have the 'delete' command.
nuf said
Not enough for me...
Also, remember, comments such as yours were also leavied against polymorphism. "I don't what the computer to guess what function I'm calling...I want to tell it explicitly"
Cheers, Mike Klein
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org