Killer Squeak App?

Henrik Gedenryd Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se
Wed Aug 22 21:14:54 UTC 2001


Stefan Matthias Aust wrote:

> In the last squeak, I changed my mind an nowadays, Self has not enough
> syntax for my taste. You really have to get used to all that (| .. |)
> object declarations ( ) method declarations, implicit self sends and the
> fact that even local variables doesn't exist.

I'd like to hear your opinion: do you think it is an advantage to allow
receiver self to be implicit? I have started to think that this breaks the
simple principle of always having the "receiver message" pattern and thereby
causes more irregularity than advantages. But I'd like to hear others'
opinion on this, I don't have a strong opinion yet. Jecel and John Maloney
might have something wise to say about this as well?

> I really the clean concept,
> but using "name := 'sma'" instead of "name: 'sma'" or even "objects[1] :=
> objects[2]" instead of "objects at: 1 Put: objects at: 2" would be more
> readable IMHO.

It is wacky that you also address temps with the "temp: value" syntax. In
effect 'self' is the inner context (cf. thisContext), not the object owning
the method!

A second effect of not having := is that there must be a lot more
parentheses in the code. Ie.

x := y blah: z  becomes   x: (y blah: z)

This is a second thing I've come to think of as a possible disadvantage.

Henrik






More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list