BCPL in the new millenium (was: Proposal3: Make $_ avalididentifier cha...

Stephane Ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Mon Jun 5 09:55:25 UTC 2000


Hi Alan

> Smalltalk-80's syntax (I believe) could
> have adopted a stronger theory of uniformity that would have yielded more
> pleasing results (I don't like it).

Like what?

>      I still like the idea of easy syntactic extension (and most of the
> possible routes to metaprogramming), but experience seems to say that
> "making it easy" should not generally be the same as "put it at the same
> level of expression". There should be "fences" that you have to jump over
> to do the metaprogramming, but once jumped, the metaprogramming should be
> easy and not obscure .... (Squeak needs a LOT OF WORK to be in accord with
> this principle.)

I would love to see how to refactor the Smalltalk messy meta model into a 
clean Clos-like MOP.  Are you thinking to that? 


I thought a lot of that but never really sat in front of a keyborad with the 
real intention to try. When I look back at CLOS lot of the entry points in the 
mop are clean because they are based on macroes that hide the internals 
mechanisms. Still with the Clos mop one of the real problem is to know that if 
you touch here you have to touch here too, even if this is documented. To that 
reagrds this is hard to design a MOP that users can use in a safe way.

Have you some ideas in that directions? 

Stef





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