On 9/5/07, Alan Kay <alan.kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
>
> Another way would be to allow implicit self in ST-80. This would
> allow control syntaxes that are usually prefixed (like
> if...then...else, for, while, etc) to be simple methods of a high
> level class (like class object).

I don't think the "implicit self" concept has been very successful in
practice.  Last I heard, in C++ the best practices were to always
explicitly call this.  Though in C++ it's ambiguous whether you are
calling a method or a free standing function.  In Java this ambiguity
would not exist, but you are required to spell out this (not that Java
is the pinnacle of language design, but much of their design is
reaction to problems with C++).

I have seen you mention at least one other time that we should simply
use/make a better language then ST-80.  Do you have any syntax
examples of what you have in mind?  I have always been curious as to
your thinking here, as for myself I think Smalltalk is very near
perfection.

It does need a powerful way of packaging (perhaps what VW has is the
way to go?), multi-methods like Lisp has would be good if one could
figure out a syntactical way of specifying that and I think adding
macros to the standard could be nice as well.  But beyond that I
really can't think of anything I would change syntax-wise.