Two important issues...

Stephane Ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Sat Feb 15 10:58:03 UTC 2003


Hi jim

I do not really understand what you imply. We are not hiding anything.
Everything is on the web page of nathanael and we all know that the RB 
AST
is better than the one in Squeak. I coded the night during 2 months a 
new pretty
printer and started to hate the way the node do not know their parents 
and other strange
behavior on comments. So ***we*** want to use SmaCC.

Stef



> Don't know about you, but I've never seen a tree those things grow on. 
> We've
> seen the part about Ducasse threatening to switch to another Smalltalk 
> a
> couple of times if somehow Squeak doesn't comply. [We both know it 
> cannot;
> the above are cross purpose with the current 'rip the image apart' 
> stuff
> going on which will probably take several months. It would not make 
> sense to
> rip the image apart and introduce potentially unstable underpinnings 
> both at
> the same time. Unless I miss my guess, the introduction of new code 
> into the
> image other than bug fixes or relatively simple reorgs will probably 
> not
> happen in the near future]
>
>> From the tone of the emails, it has sounded like someone has been 
>> holding
> these things back, keeping these prerequisites for the Traits project 
> from
> being available to Squeak. I haven't been following this thread very
> closely, but I would like to know who is responsible for keeping this 
> code
> away from us. I don't recall seeing the new browser that Ducasse 
> submitted
> for inclusion, is someone hiding it from me?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>
> PS: I didn't realize my AST was dirty, or that I needed to clean it, 
> but
> hey, that's me.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- t
> From: "Swan, Dean" <Dean_Swan at Mitel.COM>
> To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'"
> <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 7:44 PM
> Subject: RE: Two important issues...
>
>
>> Just to voice my opinion, I agree with Daniel on this.  I feel like I 
>> want
> somebody to convince me that Traits is something I need.
>>
>> I don't really understand Traits too well at this point, but I agree 
>> with
> Daniel that it seems to be of greater value for refactoring existing 
> code
> than it is for writing new code.  How is this different from AspectS 
> and
> Perspectives, or mix-ins for that matter?  My cursory (and perhaps
> incorrect) understanding leads me to believe that Traits is just 
> another
> "flavor" of the same kind of thing.
>>
>> Have there been any costs/benefits analyses done of this kind of 
>> system?
> While I understand that it allows for a higher degree of reusability, 
> I'm
> not convinced (yet) that it's worth the complexity it can add to the
> inheritance graph or the greater potential to break more classes 
> faster by
> changing a highly reused method at the Trait level.  I understand
> subclassing and overriding a method from a superclass.  Traits is more
> complex.
>>
>> Along the same line of thought, I wonder just how much utility can 
>> really
> be had from Traits?  Would refactoring the Collection hierarchy, for
> example, with Traits reduce the number of methods? code space? increase
> performance?
>>
>> I would hate to see Squeak/Smalltalk gain as much "flexibility" as
> something like C++.  Will Traits make it any easier to do ill-advised 
> things
> (i.e. write bad code)?
>>
>> Traits strikes me a little like the kind of thing an optimizing 
>> compiler
> might do "under-the-hood", but it's not clear that this fine grain 
> control
> is a "Good Thing"tm at the source level.
>>
>> I am not saying that Traits should never be a "CORE" package, but IMO 
>> it
> is  FAR to early for it to even be considered for that yet.  It would
>> be very good to see it used for some "real" code (as opposed to 
>> examples
> contrived to highlight the value of Traits) so we can get a feel for 
> where
> the strengths and weaknesses are.
>>
>> To me, Traits is a much more experimental technology than Anthony's 
>> VI4
> work (full closures, context stack unwinding, etc.), so I'm a bit wary.
>>
>> -Dean
>>
>
>
>
Prof. 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




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