Fear and loathing of the "perlification" of Smalltalk
Blake
blake at kingdomrpg.com
Fri Sep 7 10:11:33 UTC 2007
On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:25:09 -0700, Jason Johnson
<jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aha. In text it can be really hard to detect unless you're suggesting
> something insane like eating children. :) Perhaps you thought you
> were doing just that here, but with the crazy suggestions lately I
> don't know what to expect.
Well, the cues I forwarded were using words like "abomination" but, yeah,
given the tone of some threads, it probably wasn't over the top enough.
It's almost like we're discussing politics here.
> I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this. Why should an
> object's code need to reference it's own context? Do you mean "why
> should it need to explicitly state 'self'"?
That is what I mean.
> And by "If it's too hard for YOU too keep track of your object's
> context" do you mean I should remember if what methods my object/class
> has?
I'm just saying if that the removal of "self" renders your code
incomprehensible, you have bigger problems than anything that removing
"self" would create.
>> Tim is the one who used the word "tasteless" to describe a
>> situation where one doesn't constantly need to explicitly reference the
>> current
>> context.
>
> Hrm, you mean he doesn't like it unless you constantly reference the
> current context? Is that in this thread somewhere?
Quoth Mr. Rowledge: "Having a special case that lets you leave out the
recipient if it is 'self' would be clunky, confusing and tasteless."
> Clear to you. To me it's uniform and consistent. Traits I value
> highly in this world of mediocre to down-right appalling language
> designs.
That's an argument to have with Andreas.<s>
> But in self it's uniform, no? In self it's all just slots so
> accessing a method looks the same as accessing a local variable. In
> that language I wouldn't expect to use self to call local methods.
To me, that would be consistent: Access variables and methods identically,
without knowing which you're doing unless you're at the level where it has
to matter.
> So do you prefer the self language? Instead of trying to turn
> Smalltalk into Self, it might be more rewarding to get a group trying
> to bring Self back on track.
No, not particularly. Or I should say, I don't know it well enough to have
a preference. I consider a lot of the distinctions between Self and
Smalltalk trifles compared to the suggestions of meta-language constructs.
I once modeled a language after Smalltalk which had meta-language syntax
(and what you might call "sub-language" syntax, with the idea that the
language could sort-of assemble itself). It was horrible, needless to say,
so I'm intrigued to see it done well.
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