Namespaces (was: Re: [ANN]A plan for 3.8/4.0... (insertdrumroll here))

Chris Muller afunkyobject at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 4 21:38:52 UTC 2004


> > It is also good because doing the equivalent of "import
> > se.bluefish.squeakmap.yaddayadda.*" would drive me totally crazy. I
> > don't want to go there. Please tell me you don't want that either. :)
> 
> If you choose to give a namespace that name, I couldn't care less :-)

Yes Andreas, but for the pessimistic approach to succeed everyone must use
something that's "guaranteed" to be unique from each other or you run the risk
of returning to the very problem you're trying to solve; name collisions.  What
name would you choose, then, to guarantee this and also address Göran's
concern about lengthy, wordy, hard-to-read names?

I'm sorry to jump in like this, but I want to voice my support for Göran's
point.  I think he is 100% correct on everything he said about using an
optimistic approach.

We survive today without namespaces by leveraging one of Squeaks greatest
strengths; the ability for us to tool our image the way we want.  We survive by
employing "collision avoidance" measures because we can, and it has brought us
a long way to minimizing both the frequency and severity of the problem.

I definitely don't want a problem whose frequency and severity is minimized to
be "solved" with something that intrudes on me daily, or lessens the dynamic
nature of development in Squeak, such as having to stop and specify imports.

Regards,
  Chris



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list