Whoops, missed the word "collections" in your post, so forgive me for 
writing on the wrong topic!

Brian


On Saturday, Sep 27, 2003, at 22:41 America/Denver, Brian Brown wrote:

>
> On Saturday, Sep 27, 2003, at 18:05 America/Denver, Phil Hudson wrote:
>
>> Are generic/template/parameterized/typesafe collections available in
>> Smalltalk? I've had a look and can't see anything in the Squeak 
>> distro or
>> SqueakMap.
>
> Certainly not in the 'strongly-typed language' sense of it. :-)
>
>>
>> Or am I just not "getting it"? Is it just not "thinking in Smalltalk" 
>> to
>> insist on a type?
>>
>>
>>
> Yes, this is probably true. Maybe try thinking in terms of Vocabulary. 
> Since everything is a message sent to an  instance or class, then the 
> idea of "compatiple types" is determined by whether the the receiver 
> of the message understands the message. If class A understands all the 
> messages sent to it by class B, then they can be used in an 
> interchangeable way (in terms of message sends), and so can be thought 
> of as the same type. Of course, you can add methods to classes at 
> will, giving a class a larger and larger vocabulary, enabling it to be 
> 'type compatible' with many other classes.
>
> In summary, there is no type. Only messages. ;-)
>
> (I'm a relative newbie to OOP in general and Smalltalk specifically, 
> but this is the way my procedurally trained mind puts it into 
> perspective)
>
> I'm sure many of the other learned gentlemen on this list can explain 
> things more satisfactorily!
>
> Have fun!
>
> Brian
>
>