Having started out with Delphi, I do not mind caseOf:. But I more often
wish for Lisp's cond. true caseOf: looks somehow strange and like a hack to
me—just a feeling—though I admit it does make sense when I force myself to
read it as English: "For the true case of the following, do..."

Regarding letting people choose their protocols, just make sure that
Smalltalk does not end up being a write-only-for-me language like Perl. :-)
I think there has already been this discussion about how many shortcuts and
utility methods should be in the language and which should rather stay out.


Am Mi., 7. Apr. 2021 um 17:53 Uhr schrieb Thiede, Christoph <
Christoph.Thiede at student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de>:

> Woah, I didn't know that this topic has been such a hot potato. :-)
> <http://www.hpi.de/>
>
> In my opinion, people can always abuse a (domain-specific) language to
> write bad code and you cannot really stop them from doing so by limiting
> the features of the language. Instead of banning a protocol, people should
> understand *why* and *when* it is a bad idea to use them. #caseOf: & Co.
> can be used and can be abused, so I vote for keeping and legalizing it
> (otherwise we have to destroy every bread knife, too).
> If we stigmatize #caseOf:, we could also stigmatize or even deprecate
> #isKindOf: because very often, it is abused - but still, it can be useful
> in many situations where you need metaprogramming indeed, for example,
> Exception class >> #handles:.
> LBNL, I often consider both concepts as the first step of a
> larger refactoring. Alone for this purpose, I would like to keep these
> selectors.
>
> Best,
> Christoph
> ------------------------------
> *Von:* Squeak-dev <squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org> im
> Auftrag von tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>
> *Gesendet:* Sonntag, 28. März 2021 19:07:58
> *An:* The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> *Betreff:* Re: [squeak-dev] #identityCaseOf:
>
>
>
> > On 2021-03-28, at 4:09 AM, Thiede, Christoph <
> Christoph.Thiede at student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de> wrote:
> >
> > @Tim:
> >
> > > Far too like C.
> >
> > Again, why please? :-) I'm not a big fan of C either, but IMO
> switch/select/case is not the worst concept when it allows you to eliminate
> some duplication.
>
> It (both C and caseOf*) has its uses but my practical issue with caseOf*
> in Smalltalk is that I keep (very subjective and personal experience
> dependant) seeing it get used in ways that completely sidestep Smalltalk
> and implement bad C idiom. A bit like isKindOf: and isBlahClass.
>
> e.g.
> foo class
>         caseOf: {
>                 [Rabbit] -> [foo doRabbitThing].
>                 [Fox] -> [foo doFoxThing]}
> ... which of course merely (badly) replicates class
> lookup/inheritance/message-sending. It suggests a writer that cannot escape
> the mental prison of C-like assault coding.
>
> isKindOf: is a useful meta-programming idiom that I've seen used inside
> inner loops to do the same sort of not-message-sending. I've even had
> people try to justify is on the grounds that "sending messages is so slow
> and I want ot avoid it", which is just nuts.
>
> isBlahClass is almost as horrible but at least has the excuse of
> (hopefully) being part of a not yet completed cleaning of other nastiness.
>
> Part of the problem is that language flexibility always ends up being a
> tool that lets annoying people write bad FORTRAN in any language. And then
> somebody has to spend a too large fraction of their life trying to fix it.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Useful random insult:- Not enough sense to come in out of the rain.
>
>
>
>
>
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