<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Hi Marcel,<div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Nov 24, 2022, at 1:03 AM, Marcel Taeumel <marcel.taeumel@hpi.de> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div id="__MailbirdStyleContent" style="font-size: 10pt;font-family: Arial;color: #000000;text-align: left" dir="ltr">
+1 Even for a loop-based algorithm, clarity would improve if the initial case would be flagged with a symbol, not nil:<div><br></div><div>x := #start.</div><div>[ ... ] whileTrue: [</div><div> x = #start ifTrue: [x := ... ].</div><div> ...</div><div>].</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Please don’t take this personally; I find the above pretentious in the extreme, and, given how much thought Smalltalk-80’s designers gave to initializing with nil (again it’s in the blue book), displaying and/or celebrating ignorance. So -1,000.<div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div id="__MailbirdStyleContent" style="font-size: 10pt;font-family: Arial;color: #000000;text-align: left" dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Marcel</div><div class="mb_sig"></div><blockquote class="history_container" type="cite" style="border-left-style:solid;border-width:1px; margin-top:20px; margin-left:0px;padding-left:10px;">
<p style="color: #AAAAAA; margin-top: 10px;">Am 23.11.2022 21:23:27 schrieb Tobias Pape <das.linux@gmx.de>:</p><div style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Yet, nil is only seldom a good domain object.<br>-t<br><br>> On 23. Nov 2022, at 19:34, tim Rowledge <tim@rowledge.org> wrote:<br>> <br>> I won't quote it all again but what Eliot wrote is important. There are good solid reasons why Smalltalk has a rigorously defined UndefinedObject. We demand rigorously defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!<br>> <br>> tim<br><br><br><br><br></tim@rowledge.org></div></blockquote>
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