Dot notation and a crazy idea

Steve Dekorte steve at dekorte.com
Tue Mar 23 23:42:28 UTC 1999


stan at stanheckman.com wrote:
> If we someday dispose of the source file completely, saving only
> comments and byte codes, then we could experiment with syntax changes
> like this by just patching the interpreter and the pretty
> printer. Turn on new syntax. Read existing methods in new
> syntax. Write new methods in that syntax. Tire of new syntax.  Turn
> off the patches. The great advantage of losing the source file is that
> we could go back to reading and editing in the old format, with no
> damage caused by months of work in the alternate syntax, because the
> bytecodes never changed. Only the interfaces between human beings and
> bytecodes did.

And once you can do that, why not let people who like to see there code in 
C++, python, Java, NewtonScript or whatever kind of syntax see it in the form 
they're used too? 

Steve





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list