Croquet alpha release(s?)

Bert Freudenberg bert at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de
Sat Dec 7 14:48:30 UTC 2002


On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Stephane Ducasse wrote:

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

Readability.

> Why Matrix with: with: is not sufficient?

Probably for the same reason you will dish {x.y.z} but rather write (Array
with: x with: y with: z). Fine. You don't have to. And if you can't stand
seeing Matrix[i,j] in the Croquet code, switch on "decompile" in your
browser and you'll see (Matrix matrixAt: i at: j).

I consider myself an experienced Smalltalk code reader, but it takes me 
much longer to mentally parse
a matrixAt: (1 to:3) at: #all put: (b matrixAt: #all at: (1 to: 3))
than to understand the equivalent 
	a[(1 to: 3),#all] := b[#all,(1 to: 3)].

Having a minimalist syntax is great, but religiously bashing any extension
is short-sighted, at least. Even your "minimalist syntax" paper showed
braces, although you omitted them in the discussion. ;-)

If we went for a truly minimal syntax we could remove method cascades,
binary messages, or even variables, assignments, and returns, probably a
lot more. Why are these still here? Readability.

-- Bert




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