Hi all!

A few thoughts (after going through this list after my vacation):

1. Go, go, Squeakers! The activity on the list seems to be growing and
more names pop up by the day. Very nice! 

2. A few things that really NEED to be done in Squeak ASAP IMHO:
Exception handling and good networking code · la Correspondents. There
is a fast growing amount of code out there and these things really are
essential for most of the work in Squeak. Exceptions because everyone
needs them and networking code because many of the projects that can
use Squeak today depend on it.

3. Before throwing in Namespaces i Squeak though... Is it only me that
feels that they really "get in the way" when programming Java? Import
this and import that, oops, old imports laying about... Gah!

Of course namespaces are cool. And useful. But they also break the
"modelessness" that Smalltalk has. You can always hack a oneliner in
any of Smalltalks textareas (inspectors, debuggers, browsers,
workspaces etc.) and just doit. The only context you have to think
about is your "current obect" which is natural. But in Java I always
have to qualify myself to death and it is truly annoying.

I glanced through Allan's PDF-document but I did not see any reference
to how he thinks namespaces will affect our lovingly productive and
effective Smalltalk environment and how we work with our code/objects,
anyone have any thoughts? Allan?

4. XML is very nice. I work with it in Java and we are using it right
now both as a more robust way of representing objects in files than
serialization. If you do it right and couple XML with some nice
"builder" objects you can isolate your testdata better from the
evolving class schemas. 

Another perfect fit for XML is representing UIs as Mozilla are doing
in their Xul stuff. VWs windowsSpecs together with builder objects
were in retrospect "the right way to go". :-) I hate UI code
generation and I do not really believe in UI serialization as Sun
seems to do. And hacking the UIs by hand is tedious and results in
code bloat. Go XML.

But serialization of objects between languages is hard. HARD on the
brink of impossibility I would presume. OMG/CORBA are trying aren't
they? I say good luck. :-)

If you want more inspiration on the subject of moving objects, take a
good long look at Voyager from ObjectSpace. Truly cool technology. RMI
deluxe with mobile agents on top. Something like that would really be
cool in Squeak. I have not looked at the fly-by-wire stuff, is it
something like Voyager?

And finally how truly wonderful it would be to have some XML package
in Squeak. :-)

regards, G–ran

===
G–ran Hultgren, gohu at rocketmail.com, icq#:6136722
GSM: +46 709 472152, http://195.22.65.4
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi
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