> On 2020-10-20, at 11:55 AM, gettimothy via Squeak-dev <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> > On 2020-10-20, at 7:31 AM, Marcel Taeumel <marcel.taeumel at hpi.de> wrote:
> > 
> > But beware of writing too much "is(Unix|Windows)"-like code across your abstraction levels because checking for more specific capabilites might produce more readable code such as "canReadFat32Device". ... which was not your question at all here. :-D
> 
> Exactly - ask 'can I do this' not 'am I a wotsit'.
> 
> Fascinating! I see the utility of it. thx
> 

There's a hierarchy of less-dumb things to do in this area.

#isKindOf: is about the worst possible (though I'm sure somebody will chime in with an even worse idea).

Specialising is a bit (as we often do, because of lack of opportunity to get it right) to #isInteger or 
#isThingyMorph is at least sensibly indicative of what you are asking.

#canHandleDoodahReverse is much better but sometimes hard to implement really cleanly across a system.

And of course there's always 
[thingy doStuff]
	on: MyStuffError
	do: [:ex| ex helpMeObiWanKenobi]
if you prefer to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, but exceptions always seem to scare people off. And there is some performance cost - at least, there always seemed to be. Maybe there isn't so much any more?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
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