Smalltalk evolution

[Craig Latta]

Hi David--

 > Do you plan to, perhaps, include some enhancements to the Smalltalk
 > language itself?

      Well, no, but I have made changes to some fundamental parts of the 
Smalltalk environment. Many might consider them to be so fundamental as 
to be changes to the language. The main ones are getting rid of the 
system dictionary and fileouts.

 > For example, silently ignoring message failure instead of raising
 > DoesNotUnderstand exception?

      No, I don't plan to do that.

 > Namespaces perhaps?

      I don't think namespaces per se are necessary. In Spoon the name 
of each class can be anything, and classes are referenced between 
systems without using their names at all. Developers will probably want 
to create groups of conceptually-related classes, but they won't be 
namespaces. In effect, every class has its own namespace.

 > Prototypes with Slots? Unicode message names?

      I have no plans for those.

 > And, to clarify my understanding:  All message sends are asynchronous
 > in Spoon?

      No, at the moment all messages are synchronous. This is just 
what's needed to bootstrap a system. Developers can provide modules 
which provide fancier forms of messaging later (like what Croquet uses).

 > Where can one find out about the current evolutionary efforts related
 > to Squeak and Smalltalk?  I see lots of random articles but no real
 > driving process...

      You have to talk to people, you can't read it in an article 
somewhere (such a thing would be obsolete as soon as it was written, 
anyway). Asking here and on the Squeak group are good places to start.


      thanks,

-C