"Jarvis, Robert P." wrote:

> Thanks for the explanations.  What troubles me is that the grammar of the
> language now becomes more complex, in my opinion, rather than simpler.  With
> this proposal Smalltalk would now have "normal" message sends, of the form
> "<object> <message> {<optional arguments and keywords>}" and "implicit"
> message sends, of the form "<message> {<optional arguments and keywords>}".
> Maybe I'm just in reactionary mode today (I'll be one of the first against
> the wall when the revolution comes, no doubt :-) but it just doesn't seem to
> "flow" as nicely to me.

Bob,

This is my aversion as well. One of the things the ST syntax does better than
any other language I've met yet, is consistently drive home the messaging
paradigm. There is always a reciever followed by a message send. I'm always
amused when I read code from Java or C++ where most of the message sends are of
the implicit style (ala good ol' functions) and authors obvious understanding of
the object/messaging pardigm is abviously nil. I'm not averted to getting rid
of/or changing assignment syntax, but please don't do the implicit (or hidden)
message sending thing.

(One of the definitions of "implicit" in the American Heritage Dictionary is
"Contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent")

--
Travis Griggs (a.k.a. Lord of the Fries)
Member, Fraven Skreiggs Software Collective
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