And such a big change that it isn't likely to be implemented, just talked about endlessly until everyone gives up and the status quo is maintained. The thing that makes his proposal so nice is that it's just a tiny change to make the status quo good enough to let us actually have a working solution while everyone argues endlessly about something fancier.
I see three options that are likely
- Do nothing (most likely)
- Do very little, Göran's approach, formalize and add tool support to
*current prefixing practice* (possible, but unlikely) 3. Do a huge change and add full namespaces and get rid of the big bad global SystemDictionary (when hell freezes over in this community)
So, being annoyed by seeing and typing prefixes constantly, and also being pragmatic and wanting to see a solution get accepted by the community, 2 seems the only viable option. As cool as 3 might be, it just isn't going to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my impression.
Given the right tools i'll use 3. By having a tool which can import packages from 1 and 2 to 3 , i will use 3 without doubts. And then, if someone really want to use new code then he will be forced to use 3, and so, all current arguments against it will simply step back before a desire to use it. :)
P.S. And i really don't care, do i need to type extra characters for prefix or not. As i said before, usually number of user-land(non core) class references in code is barely beyond 3. So i see no big harm in typing prefix couple times in couple of places. Comparing to benefits of namespaces its a joke.