Did I say that we should change squeak?

here is what I wrote:

"I would like to know what you would think of the following change in 
Smalltalk.
We are really in the mood to make some change in the compiler to play 
with the idea
for our research."

Stef


Why people do not read emails?


> I have what I consider a better reason not to want to see the 
> suggested idea researched in the public core Squeak code -- I use 
> Squeak because it's free (important to me) and Smalltalk (more 
> important to me) -- NOT some other language, like Self.  From postings 
> I've seen, both for this thread and (much) earlier ones, I gather that 
> any time I want to program with Self, I can download an image and 
> start hitting keys.  But I don't want to program in Self, I want to 
> program in Smalltalk, and Squeak fits that model closely enough for my 
> purposes.
>
> Conversely, I see nothing wrong with *forking* a copy of the public 
> core Squeak code, making the changes suggested for the research, and 
> making it publically available as something else, such as "Eek" or 
> "Squawk", or whatever, and setting up "Eek" web sites, Eek discussion 
> lists, and encouraging Eek porting efforts.  I might even subscribe 
> myself, and after a while might even think it worth my time to drop 
> Squeak in favor of Eek.  I just think that despite the intent of Alan 
> Kay, Dan Ingalls and company to do research with Squeak as a starting 
> point, in both "pink" and "blue" planes of  endeavor, 
> Squeak-as-a-Smalltalk has too much momentum to change into 
> Squeak-as-a-something-else -- unless a relatively clean break is made 
> to create something like Eek-as-something-other-than-Smalltalk.

Guess what we will do!
Still appreciate the effort we are doing to clean the kernel in a 
backward compatible way and removing only mess.


> And of course, what anyone does in the privacy of their own personal 
> Squeak (or Eek) image is their own business, and I have no objections 
> to research conducted therein at all.
>
> Of course, I suppose one could argue that we should fork off a Squeak 
> image to become Eek, a Smalltalk, while Squeak moves on to become 
> something else...

A dogma (sorry I could not resist)

>
> Nah!  :-)
>
> Stephen Pair wrote:
>
>> Nathanael Schärli wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Martin,
>>>
>>>
>>>> But you loose something, namely encapsulation. Every object outside
>>>> morph can screw the state of this morph, without doing 'more' to 
>>>> it, meaning this morph will be put in an unvalid state.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that the argument about "loosing encapsulation" is complete
>>> bogus because it has no relevance in practice. In fact, encapsulation
>>> means:
>>>
>>
>> [lot's of good stuff snipped]
>>
>> I totally agree with Nathanael's comments...looking at instance 
>> varaibles as if they were somehow untouchable or private is the wrong 
>> way of looking at it.  It's very similar to the argument in favor of 
>> having public/protected/private methods.  First, you can always get 
>> an an object's inst vars using #instVarAt:(put:)...so any argument 
>> that there is encapsulation is wrong.  There isn't.  There's just 
>> some notion that gives the user of the class some idea of what's safe 
>> and what's not safe to do.  I tend to view the notion of 
>> public/protected/private methods as a feeble attempt at classifying 
>> methods based on how likely it is that their interface will change 
>> over time (private being the most likely, public being the least).  
>> Similarly, an instance variable without direct getters/setters is 
>> simply a comment saying "don't directly get or set this inst var, or 
>> if you do, then be prepared to accept the consequences when I release 
>> my next version."
>> Encapsulation is really only achieved by responsible usage of the 
>> interfaces exposed by a class.
>> So, to say that you're losing encapsulation is simply not accurate.  
>> You might be loosing some interface notational capability, but you 
>> are not losing encapsulation because you cannot lose what you never 
>> had in the first place.
>>
>> - Stephen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> ..	Donald Major		"Tech Support..your Windows machine doesn't
> dtm	SAS Institute Inc.	 work?  Have you tried installing a Macintosh?"
> 	Cary, NC 27513			- me          SAS - "The Power to Know"
> 	AKA "Ol' Baby Lee"
>
>
>
>
Prof. Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/
  "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do 
different? ...  especially if,
  by doing something different, today might not be your last day on 
earth" Calvin&Hobbes

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