On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Sergei Gnezdov wrote:

[snip]

> My first impression of Squeak was: Object is too big.  It is too big!  It 
> holds too much.

Some people disagree, some people agree. I'd prefer a technical argument
for it's being "too big" or holding "too much".

> Only UI objects can beep.  

Demonstrably false. Or perhaps all objects in Squeak are UI objects.

> Not every object wants to know how to present 
> itself in HTML.

Oh really?

[snip persistence]
> The same is about Object>>asHtmlDocument... The default policy is 
> implemented in a third party class.  Default policy uses reflection to do 
> its work on any object in the system.

Sure, this works. There are other ways as well.

> It is easy to choose an easy way to add new functionality via new call to 
> Object, but it is not the most correct way.

There are certainly reason's to prefer otherwise.

> I don't want to cause a lot of flame here, but Java is a very good example 
> in this case.  Java object is small.

But rather uninteresting as well :)

(I totally agree that factoring stuff out of Object can be a great thing,
I'm just not yet convinced that visitor patter like solutions are the best
way to go at it.)

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.