Hi andreas

when I saw the extension Matrix[,]
I thought that this was not worth. Have you arguments why having this 
is good?
Why Matrix with: with: is not sufficient?

This means that we will have different code, then as a book writer this 
means that
you have Squeak specific syntax.....so I'm worried.

Now this is clear that I would like to see Squeak and Smalltalk evolves 
but the introduction
of new stuff should really pay off (I'm thinking in traits here for 
example) and I do not see why
Matrix[,] is better than Matrix with:with:

So I agree with the arguments of Daniel.

Stef


On jeudi, décembre 5, 2002, at 10:33  pm, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:

> There are a few different reasons. I'll list them in ascending order of
> importance, as I see them:
> 1. Compatibility with other Smalltalks. Being able to port code around
> is a good thing.
> 2. Compatibility with thing that refer to Smalltalk syntax, like books
> and ST parsing tools. These include, but are not limited to the
> RefactoringBrowser and the related tools, like Smalllint.
> 3. Simplicity. Today we can excuse an extension because we need fast 3d
> graphics, tommorrow we'll find another that's very convinient for
> printing financial information, and before you know it, we'll be
> programming in CobTran. Or ForBol. Or something just as elegant.
>
> It's really mostly the third - I like Smalltalk small. I've heard from
> David Simmons all the best reasons to extend the Smalltalk syntax in
> magnificently ingenious ways, serving scenarios much more common,
> AFAICT, than matrix operations (easy interoperability with c headers),
> and my conclusion is that that's great for the expert, not such a hot
> deal for the newbie, and the expert can override compilerClass.
>
> BTW, if we start playing with compilerClass, it would also be a good
> idea to color such classes differently in the browser, or something 
> like
> that, to indicate where the rules change...
>
> Daniel
>
> Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>> Daniel,
>>
>>> Does it seem reasonable to you to use the #compilerClass hook to
>>> localize the effects of the Matrix hacks?
>>
>> The changes are a true language extension. No previously valid
>> expression is now invalid. Some previously invalid expressions are now
>> valid and have a well-defined semantics. In that sense you can write
>> perfectly "compatible" code if that is what you are after. I can't see
>> any reason for why anyone would want to restrict the extensions to
>> certain classes.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>   - Andreas
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>> [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Daniel Vainsencher
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 9:27 PM
>>> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>> Subject: Re: Croquet alpha release(s?)
>>>
>>>
>>> On one hand, beating C++ performance at numeric stuff with
>>> such a clean
>>> interface is surely nice. On the other hand, assuming most of the 
>>> code
>>> in squeak remains very much unrelated to such things, I would
>>> prefer to
>>> leave the default compiler (and even more so, the default syntax)
>>> unaltered.
>>>
>>> Does it seem reasonable to you to use the #compilerClass hook to
>>> localize the effects of the Matrix hacks? I think of this as a less
>>> drastic plugin technology for a specific kind of performance critical
>>> code, similar to primitives. Or do you see Matrix operations becoming
>>> common to so many people that the two dialects would only be
>>> confusing?
>>>
>>> Daniel Vainsencher
>>>
>>> "David A. Smith" <davidasmith at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>>> PhiHo,
>>>> To that end, we will be incorporating our general purpose
>>>> n-dimensional Matrix class which is intended to be used to
>>> access the VPUs
>>>> in a clean way.
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>
>
>
Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE (ducasse at iam.unibe.ch) 
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/
  "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do
  different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today
  might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes