Hi guys!

"Peter van Rooijen" <squeak at vanrooijen.com> wrote:
[SNIP]
> Tim, I understand your example and I don't disagree that there is a
> potential for confusion. But this is just how Smalltalk is constructed.
> Classes are namespaces for their descendents. That Squeak hasn't correctly
> implemented this part of what Smalltalk is, does nothing to change this.

First of all - I am on Tim's side on this. I find shadowing to be a
"shady business" altogether for all reasons stated. :-) Then, exactly
what different kinds of shadowing we have/allow, what you can control as
an author, when and how the system should warn/barf/shout etc - that is
a different story. Don't intend to go there.

BUT... (finally getting to my *only* point of this post) the above text
clearly shows what I consider to be two different views on what Squeak
is/should be.

I think Tim views Squeak as a Smalltalk-derivative that, even though it
currently is very "Smalltalk compliant", not at all *needs* to be and
probably will evolve more and more away from the ANSI Smalltalk standard
(this is by definition since the ANSI standard is staying put).

I may of course be wrong in this and I rely on Tim in that case telling
me in his own special way. :-)

Now - this is *my* opinion:

Squeak is currently very close to Smalltalk-80 and the ANSI standard.
But that is not the goal. IMHO Smalltalk is a very good
language/environment - but it is after all a *dead* language if we look
at the ANSI standard - it is not evolving. Of course Smalltalk
compatibility is a good thing, but IMHO *only* when it doesn't hinder us
from evolving Squeak into the future.

And I actually think Alan agrees on this too.

regards, Göran