Pressures for Substantially New Squeaks
Andrew C. Greenberg
werdna at gate.net
Sat Feb 13 16:34:17 UTC 1999
Reinier provides a clear (albeit unsurprising) existence proof that
the semantics for sound modular programming are already present in
Squeak. As I noted in an earlier posting, a reading of the
VisualBasics white paper on namespaces suggests that it would not be
an overwhelmingly difficult problem to provide strong namespace
support. Concerning his solution . . .
> Hi,
>
> I've been following the name space discussion for a while and I do not
> really understand the need for something like that. I.e. I solve the
> "problem" as follows:
.. . .
> Now, if we can discipline our selves to always specify which dictionary to
> use the problem can be solved at Object level.
> Example (an actual problem for me when working on ThingLab)
>
> thingLabSliderClass := self classAt: 'Slider' in: 'ThingLab'.
> morphicSliderClass := self classAt: 'Slider' in: 'Morphic'.
Rein imposes quite a bit of discipline on himself and others. I, for
one, find merit in the syntactic sugar of being able to create
strings simply by reference to the class "String," rather than having
to use, the onerous:
stringClass _ self classAt: #String in: #Smalltalk
foo _ stringClass new: 20
he would observe, correctly, that it would be unnecessary since that
is the default dictionary. My point, precisely! Users preferring
the cleaner syntax
foo _ String new: 20
for things other than basic types will be encourages simply to forego
the "benefits" of the discipline.
Ergo the development over the years of "module" definitions, with
import facilities including generic imports that do all the work of
importing for you. (Clearly, that work can be builtin to Reinier's
basic system with a bit of reflexive tinkering, but again, that's my
point.)
The essential functionality of being able to have the most commonly
used symbols (typically the most local and sytem-based global
symbols) referred to by their name alone, with the option of giving
fully qualified names for others is attractive to people building
modules. It's also far easier for folks to use, and hence far more
likely to be used.
Agreed that the language needn't be changed to accomplish the task,
but it ought to take less than (what will appear to most as)
fundamental system hacking to accomplish.
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