> > I agree we need namespaces, I just think we can do better,
>
> That's the thing, not everyone agrees about needing them, which in the past
> has made adding them a losing battle.

+1, and Göran's proposal is transparent and preserves the classic
simplicity and dynamism of Smalltalk.

Squeak offers the possibility that "power users" (not hard-core
developers), someday, maybe after Squeak By Example showing them how,
will "hop in and drive" to sketch a program.  But as soon as we
require import declarations, etc. just to sling a simple program
together, then you've lost the "power users" group and catering
exclusively to just programmers and engineers.  Not to mention, it
feels a bit early bound.

Future Squeaks are moving toward smaller images with less code, where
name collisions will be virtually non-existent.  In each of these tiny
images, will we have a big honkin' namespace system "just in case?"
Even in todays phat images, name collisions are the 1% case, so the
solution should have the benefit of being invisible 99% of the time,
and handling the problem as simply and elegantly as possible that 1%
of the time.  Göran's approach seems to do this.

 - Chris