[Newbies] new vs. initialize

[Tim Johnson]

On Dec 8, 2008, at 8:56 PM, Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:

> Initially though this recommendation didn't make any sense to me  
> because I didn't know how the implementation of #new in Behaviour is  
> different from strict Smalltalk-80 as I understand it.  I.e.  
> originally in Smalltalk-80 #new did not also send #initialize, but  
> now in Squeak it does.

This recent (!) change to auto-initialize puzzles me as well.  So much  
existing code was written with the opposite case being true, that it  
seems so risky to change!  To diverge from the ST-80 standard is even  
more risky, I would think.

I was convinced that this change is the one-and-only reason why  
BDFFontReader became broken.  So what else is broken now because of  
this change?  I don't know.  What human logic instigated the change?   
I also don't know.  Perhaps it makes the system more accessible or  
consistent for newbies?

It was because of changes like this that I kind of threw in the hat on  
Squeak for a while, after 3.8 and before 3.10.  It seemed all these  
weird changes that  seemed illogical to me (a relative newcomer to  
Smalltalk) were being made, while existing problems were not being  
addressed.

- TimJ