Could you tell a newbie what the rational for all these changes is? 



On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Michael van der Gulik wrote:

> Hi Anthony.
> 
> Interesting idea. I have a few questions though:
> 
> * Will it be fast? Are you going to be compiling to machine code, or 
> interpreting? Or both?
> 
> * Will it be secure / modular / sandboxed? You mention Namespaces; does 
> that mean that the machine would be safe to run foreign code? Is this a 
> goal?
> 
> Also, a more general question. There are no instance variables and you 
> can only assign to them by doing #instVarAt:...
> Now, this is a great idea, but will you be making "a := 2." shorthand 
> for "myObject #instVarAt: 4 put: 2."?
> 
> What happens in Squeak? I see instVarAt:put: in class Object, so does 
> that mean that ":=" get's turned into a "instVarAt:put:" by the 
> compiler? Is ":=" considered to be a message? Much in the same way, is 
> accessing an instance variable turned into an "instVarAt:" by the 
> compiler? This behaviour would be very handy; you could do useful things 
> like adding pre- and post- conditions to instance variable usage by 
> overriding these methods.
> 
> Michael.
> 
> p.s. congrats for getting into Georgia Tech!
> 
> Anthony Hannan wrote:
> 
> >Hello fellow Squeakers,
> >
> >Below is a set of language features that I would like to see in a new
> >language evolved from Squeak.  I call it Squik.  Many of these ideas
> >have been discussed on this list before in one form or another,
> >including private instance variables recently.  But I think as a whole
> >this set of features makes for a nice modular and flexible language.  I
> >plan on making this my next project, so I am very interested in getting
> >your input first.  I know there are related projects: Class boxes,
> >Traits, and Exupery compiler.  Maybe we should collaborate.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Anthony
> >
> >The text below can also be found on
> >http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/Squik.
> >
> >Squik: A proposal for a next generation Smalltalk
> >  
> >
> 
> 
> 
>