"Michael S. Klein" wrote:
> 
>         Picard: Smalltalk?
>         Data:   Yes, sir.... I've found that humans often use
>                 smalltalk during awkward moments, therefore I've
>                 written a new subroutine for that purpose.
> 
> So, I guess that they are *still* using subroutines in the 24th
> century.

Huh? Methods are just subroutines by another name.
Yes, there is a (single) difference (polymorphism). Everything else is
old hat: parameter passing (with an additional implicit 'self'
parameter), local variables, synchronous call/return sequence, recursion
etc.

This was one of my initial grudges against Smalltalk: Lots of new words
meaning just the same old stuff, making it difficult to understand what
was really new about Smalltalk. Just try it:

  Smalltalk terminology   Standard terminology
    method                  subroutine
    message send            subroutine call
    object                  data structure
    self                    first parameter

I concede there are important differences, and a different set of
concepts. But some Smalltalk-80 books said that the difference is in
methods and messages, and that's just not true; these concepts may have
been designed to be different but turned out to map quite clearly to
well-established concepts.

Regards,
Joachim
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