Well, it is a long winded way of saying "yes, multimethod dispatch is
nice".  But as he points out, the same thing can be done with
double-dispatch (visitor pattern etc.), which is what multimethod has
to do anyway, at runtime.  But having multimethod is less typing and
more concise, which is worth something.  I personally can't think of
any concise way to add it to Smalltalk.

But a good question comes out of this:  Do we have this duplication,
and can traits (i.e. the "not connected to the specific classes" he
mentioned) help out with this?

On 10/28/07, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>
> On 28-Oct-07, at 2:32 AM, Michael Davies wrote:
>
> > There's an interesting post and discussion here:
> > http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/too-much-of-good-thing-not-
> > all.html
>
> Actually I think it is 95% bullshit. It reads like it is trying to
> make excuses for the poor quality of java.
>
> And that apparent quoting of Alan is not one I am familiar with - and
> I'm fairly sure I was there when he made the comment about C++ not
> being what he had in mind. I certainly can't find any net source for
> this 'full' quote.
>
> I did come acros some astonishing rubbish while searching for it
> though, including what looks like a Ruby hagiography where some dimwit
> appears to be claiming
> "Why do I have to put the thing even Smalltalk abandoned (leaving
> illusion though) in Ruby? They are ugly too, I think. -- matz
> on Smalltalk often control structure being object is mere illusion in
> most
> Smalltalk implementation "
>
> Which is such a piece of crapulent cockamamie confabulabulatory
> contrariness I'm amazed the net didn't reach out through the writer's
> browser and strangle him/her to save the rest of us frim his/her
> wisdumb.
>
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible if you don't know what
> you are talking about.
>
>
>
>
>