On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:18:41 -0700, Göran Krampe <goran at krampe.se> wrote:

> Recall that this is a HUMAN problem, not a technical one. HUMANS have one
> single shared namespace that we try to keep track of stuff in. If lots  
> and lots of people start reusing the same short name for different  
> things we
> WILL get confused no matter if the computer is fine with it. :)

Oh, no, humans have more namespaces than the most seasoned Java or .NET  
programmer could imagine, and we usually don't supply the literal context!  
If I say program, I'll expect you to fill in the right namespace(s).

television.program
work.program
government.program
football.program
computer.education.program
computer.code.program

(Forgive my use of "." here. Pascal programmers have been using "." since  
the introduction of "units", which solved both namespace and package  
problems.)

All that aside, Goran's plan seems to address the problem (and nothing  
else) with a minimal amount of pain, and has the virtue of being currently  
usable (I think). It also raises the interesting issue of what problems we  
should be using tools to solve versus what the language should solve,  
which I'm not sure gets the proper attention.

Goran, I missed what would happen with existing classes, like "Array".  
Would existing packages have to be given namespace designations?

	===Blake===