On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, ducasse wrote:

> This is always worth been reminded that we are not the center of  
> universe :)
> 
> On Vendredi, sep 12, 2003, at 04:55 Europe/Zurich, Avi Bryant wrote:
> >
> > The only formal conventions I know of for dealing with this problem  
> > actually come not from Smalltalk but from the NeXT FoundationKit for  
> > Objective-C.

Just to add a little historical perspective, the original Objective C
library (called "objpak", designed and written by Brad Cox, and
commercialised by Stepstone) had no such convention at all.  Object
implements +new, and that's about all there is to it.

FWIW, objpak feels _way_ more like Smalltalk than the {NeXT,Open}Step
Foundation (or AppKit).  Syntax apart, you'd think you _were_ writing
Smalltalk.  It's highly polymorphic and not encumbered by any of the
quasi-static typing that litters the Foundation classes.

(IMHO, NeXT [and later Apple] crucified the language after they bought the
rights from Stepstone.  Although the language implemented today by gcc
bears a passing resemblence to the original, it has lost a lot of the
[extreme] Smalltalk-like philosophy that it had.)

Just my EUR 0.02 (= $0.0242, at last night's close ;^)

Ciao,
Ian