On 25.10.2010, at 23:42, Lawson English wrote:

> On 10/25/10 2:23 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 25.10.2010, at 23:10, Eliot Miranda wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net> wrote:
>>> In the Wikipedia entry on Smalltalk, there is this line in the history section, 3rd paragraph, added roughly a year ago:  "...Smalltalk-80 added [[metaclass]]es, to help maintain the "everything is an object" (except private instance variables) paradigm by associating properties and behavior with individual classes, ..."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Is this one of those esoteric details that mere mortals are not meant to understand, or is this an error?
>>> 
>>> "(except private instance variables)" looks like a dig or a jibe.  I would have put it
>>> 
>>>  "...Smalltalk-80 added [[metaclass]]es, to help maintain the "everything is an object" paradigm by allowing classes to have their own specific state and behavior, ..."
>>>  
>>> Perhaps they were trying to say that because Smalltalk lacks private instance variables Smalltalk objects are not true objects, which is I suppose arguable.  But it makes poor sense to state that private instance variables aren't objects; public inst vars aren't objects either.
>> 
>> It's plain nonsense. Here's the edit that added the "private instance" modifier:
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smalltalk&diff=prev&oldid=280020438
>> 
>> Someone should just correct it.
>> 
> So now I just confused (more). Instance variables are NOT objects in Squeak?
> 
> 
> Lawson

They are, don't get confused.

It depends on what is meant by "instance variable". Their contents are objects of course. No doubt about that, everything is still an object.

But there is no "variable" object. Assignment to temps and instance variables is not a message send, but done "directly". I guess that's what some people mean when complaining about insufficient "objectness" of variables.

- Bert -


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20101025/b0ac7eff/attachment.htm