I agree completely. Although I appreciate all the innovative proposals, 
I have yet to see one that makes Smalltalk more expressive and flexible. 

Ivan

Date forwarded: 	16 Feb 2000 20:03:21 -0000
From:           	"Jarvis, Robert P. \(Contingent\)" <Jarvisb at timken.com>
To:             	"'squeak at cs.uiuc.edu'" <squeak at cs.uiuc.edu>
Subject:        	RE: How about Smalltalk-2000?
Date sent:      	Wed, 16 Feb 2000 15:06:20 -0500
Forwarded by:   	squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Send reply to:  	squeak at cs.uiuc.edu

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Warren Postma [SMTP:wpostma at ztr.com]
> > Sent:	Wednesday, February 16, 2000 11:57 AM
> > To:	'Dan Ingalls'
> > Subject:	How about Smalltalk-2000?
> > 
> > Voila, Smalltalk-2000, a dialect of Smalltalk-80 that acknowledges
> > that Smalltalk has finally developed an alternative to the most
> > unreadable part of Smalltalk-80 syntax.
> > 
> What's *better* about this?  Is grafting bits and pieces of Basic,
> Python, Java, C, Fortran, COBOL, and/or <your favorite language here>
> going to make Smalltalk "better"?  Or is this simply pandering to
> people whose vision of what a computer language "should" look like has
> been formed by exposure to those other languages, and who don't care
> to learn anything new?
> 
> When I first started trying to learn Smalltalk, back around nine years
> ago, I bought a copy of Smalltalk/V for Windows v1.0, loaded it one my
> machine, started working my way through the tutorial, and I just
> flat-out did not get it.  At the time I had about 18 years of
> experience with ALGOL-derived languages, and this Smalltalk stuff
> was...well, "different".  It was quite obvious to me that Smalltalk
> was all wrong, totally illegible, screwed up, and *it just didn't look
> right*.  Now, C - C was perfect.  Wonderful.  Not only that, I knew it
> really well.  Ditto C++, although there were lots of quirky little
> bits in there I didn't (and still don't, for that matter) grok - but
> no matter.  It was perfect.  (Of course, ten years before *that* I
> thought C was screwed up - any language that used *symbols* like '{'
> instead of good old words like 'BEGIN', and which used <retch!>
> *lower-case letters* in identifiers, wasn't worth *MY* time :-).  I
> iterated through the cycle of "I want to learn Smalltalk - this stuff
> looks yucky - it's obviously screwed up - to h*ll with it" several
> times until I managed to clear my "previously-conceived notions"
> stack, and actually sat down and figured out the how's and why's of
> Smalltalk.  If I recall correctly I finally had my "road to Damascus"
> experience when I realized that the language designers weren't simply
> being perverse when they made the "normal" "if <condition> then
> <statement> else <statement>" logic into "<boolean> ifTrue: <block>
> ifFalse: <block>" - it's this way because #ifTrue:ifFalse: is, by God,
> a *message* sent to a Boolean which evaluates the correct block
> depending on *which* Boolean (true or false) receives the message. 
> The receiving Boolean knows *which* block to evaluate simply because
> it "knows" (by existence) which Boolean it is, and has the proper
> logic written in to it.  That was, I think, the most electrifying
> experience I'd had in computing since I figured out, when I was
> sixteen, that computers weren't half as complicated as I'd been told,
> and that I could actually understand what was going on.
> 
> OK, count me among the pro-Smalltalk "don't change a hair for me/Not
> if you care for me" crowd.  I find the internal consistency of
> Smalltalk wonderful. I don't *want* a bunch of special "let's look
> more like C/Python/ALGOL" syntax rules, VM-supported Singleton
> objects, and/or other (pardon my bluntness) crap littering the
> landscape.  If something is truly an improvement, great.  But "let's
> make Smalltalk look more like <some other language>" is not a step
> forward on either the pink or blue planes.
> 
> Bob Jarvis
> Compuware @ Timken
> 



Dr. Ivan Tomek,
Jodrey School of Computer Science
Acadia University
Nova Scotia, Canada
fax: (902) 585-1067
voice: (902) 585-1467
e-mail: ivan.tomek at acadiau.ca