FFI problem: too many arguments

Marcus Denker denker at iam.unibe.ch
Sun Feb 19 11:29:10 UTC 2006


On 19.02.2006, at 01:42, Dan Ingalls wrote:

>> There is no fix for this problem. In Squeak, the number of  
>> parameters for a method invocation is limited to 15.
>
> I think there may be a relatively simple solution for extending the  
> number of arguments to 31.  I realize that it is only a factor of  
> two, and folks may consider it not worth worrying about this unless  
> all limits are to be relieved

Everytime someone proposes a small improvement, people are very fast  
to argue that "there will be a much more general solution to this  
soon". Or "those will be replaced
anyway" or the common "genius trap": Not doing the small increment  
because there are much better, much more general solution thinkable  
(and when those are done,
even better, even more general one are thinkable, which in turn means  
to postpone again. And again, to infinity...)

If we look into the history of Squeak, we see that those grand  
schemes seldom where realized. Or if they are realized, it takes a  
long time, with both
old an new used in parallel.

So I have come to the conclusion that the "not perfect unimportant  
small improvement" is indeed very important.

- Even if you plan to throw out a subsystem next week, do fix the  
trivial bug in it today.
- Even if something will be obsolete soon, include the improvements  
that have already been done.

That does not mean to stop improving on the grand scale: Improvement  
needs to be continuous, on all levels, all the time. Beeing able to  
do change in the
small is the pre-requesite of beeing able to do change in the large.

> but, if I'm correct, I'd be remiss if I didn't point this out.
>

Yes, indeed. thanks a lot! I will put it on mantis so it's not lost.  
Maybe someone find the time (or necesity) to implement it.

        Marcus



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