Using left-arrow is one issue, but the way it's done also steals a 
character from the character set, and more importantly, from the keyboard. 
There's no <- key on a keyboard (Well, actually there is. Perhaps we should 
use that if we're going to free ourselves of the constraints of mainstream 
computing conventions. It's easier to reach than shift-hyphen, too).

So to me, while _, especially in comments or C callouts, is an issue, it's 
QWERTY of the moment that is a bigger problem than ASCII of the 70's. After 
all, it's not like modern Smalltalks can't display a left-arrow, they just 
don't replace an existing ASCII character with it.

At 04:51 AM 4/23/2001 -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
>Just for the record, "<-" came first. SInce we controlled all at PARC in 
>the early 70s and no one liked ":=" as an assignment token (the "=" is not 
>a good sign to have here), the early PARC languages all used the "<-" 
>character. Both the screen and printing fonts that we made had this 
>character. I was gone from PARC by the final stages of Smalltalk-80, but I 
>remember others mentioning the long fight over whether they should 
>capituate to the Standard 7-bit ASCII of the late 70s. Apparently, they did.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Alan
>
>
>
>At 11:40 AM +0100 4/23/01, John Hinsley wrote:
>>Stephane Ducasse wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hi
>>>
>>>  I'm really wondering why Squeak code continues to have _
>>>  instead of using :=.
>>
>>I actually prefer it! I find := pretty awkward to type (so easy to leave
>>the shift key up for too long). And if you go /:= you end up with
>>Adolph!
>>
>>I think we should ask the VW developers (politely, but firmly) to add _
>>as an alternative.
>>
>>Cheers
>>
>>John
>>
>>--
>>******************************************************************************
>>Marx: "Why do Anarchists only drink herbal tea?"
>>Proudhon: "Because all proper tea is theft."
>>******************************************************************************
>
>--
>Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development
>knight at acm.org
>aknight at cincom.com
>http://www.cincom.com/scripts/smalltalk.exe/downloads/index.asp
>