Squeak-dev Digest, Vol 22, Issue 20

lex at cc.gatech.edu lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Oct 19 22:35:13 UTC 2004


Andres Valloud <sqrmax at cox.net> wrote:
> Nobody, not even Smalltalkers, should be code monkeys.
> 
> And I guess sooner or later we will want auto-complete for the
> optional type information we will have to type...

Let me make a specific suggestion to think about.  What if you drop the
"have to", and suppose that people attach types to variables whenever
they feel like it?  What if you insist that the type system *never* nags
you?


Instead of insisting on type safety (which requires nagging), you use
the type information for documentation, browsing, auto-completion, and
in general giving hints to the user?  What if, instead of looking for
places where there *might* be a type error at runtime (which is lots of
nagging!), you look for places where there is *almost certainly* a type
error at runtime?

I don't know exactly where you'd end up, but it seems like there are
some useful tools down that path, and it seems like many of those tools
would fit well with the rest of Smalltalk.  The first step is to let go of
the "type safety" goal--it's too severe a constraint.



Lex



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