On Monday, May 26, 2003, at 10:32  AM, Marco Paga wrote:

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> Hi all.
> I've found an article in the ix (german magazine) 6 June 2003 on page 
> 128ff.
> The author Cai Ziegler says the following (translated): "In nearly 
> every
> scripting language the principle of secret (I mean that you can make
> something private) is broken. Because scripts are not compiled, and the
> source can be read and edited, it is easy for everybody to change the
> modifiers of methods from protected or private to to public."
> Although the article is about the OO features in PHP I have a question 
> to this
> having squeak in mind.
> Every Squeaker has the source and can add instance var accessors to the
> classes whereever it is interesting for her. So why is it a problem in 
> PHP
> and not in Squeak?

It's not a problem in PHP either. Actually the statement above doesn't 
make much sense. Like Squeak, PHP doesn't have method modifiers - all 
methods are public. Regardless, it's hardly a flaw in the language if 
someone edits the source code and breaks something. Ziegler seems to be 
saying he doesn't like to distribute source code.

<shrug>


Colin