Squeak-dev Digest, Vol 22, Issue 20

Alejandro F. Reimondo aleReimondo at smalltalking.net
Sun Oct 17 19:09:38 UTC 2004


> For me I would like to get something that tell me:
> this argument receives the messages of TSortable

Names of arguments are used to guidance in the type

of the arguments a message requires.

Imagine that we have a powerful annotation type system,

and people loose the interest of giving good names

to arguments...

Something *very* important in Smalltalk training is the

transmission of community rules that must not be missing

nor replaced by sophisms that solve (only?) the technical

part of the constrains involved in training people.

If you find a message with requires an argument that is

a collection, but do not specify if the elements must

be magnitudes... open a workspace, try it and look

what happen (it is the best choice for long term

training of adults, and provably not the best for

children).

cheers,

Ale.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "stéphane ducasse" <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch>
To: "Andres Valloud" <sqrmax at cox.net>; "The general-purpose Squeak
developers list" <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: Re[6]: Squeak-dev Digest, Vol 22, Issue 20


> andres
>
> there is a difference between a type system and a typed-language.
> The type system does not have to specify the language semantics. A type
> system
> is just a set of rules that extract information from source or
> execution.
>
> Now what we learned is that:
> type system are good to support understanding
> typed languages gets in your way
>
> but you can have a type system to help annotating your dynamically
> typed language.
> There is no anatgonism. This is just that we should be clear on what we
> want to get.
> For me I would like to get something that tell me:
> this argument receives the messages of TSortable
>
> Stef
>
> On 17 oct. 04, at 07:33, Andres Valloud wrote:
>
> > Hello Andreas,
> >
> > Saturday, October 16, 2004, 2:50:22 PM, you wrote:
> >
> > AR> I respect your opinions but please don't put things into my mouth
> > that I
> > AR> haven't said or meant.
> >
> > I did not put words in your mouth.  I expressed what I understood you
> > meant.  I'd like to know how I didn't get what you wrote.
> >
> >>> From another point of view: Smalltalk's point was to teach kids, and
> >>> it seems to me it was important to make it late bound.  Therefore I
> >>> don't expect kids to understand the far reaching consequences of the
> >>> static type system you propose.
> > AR> But you are aware that eToys do have a static type system, are
> > AR> you? It seems as if kids don't have that many problems with static
> > AR> type systems as you are claiming.
> >
> > There was no eToys back in the 70s.  I thought the point of Smalltalk
> > was to let kids write Smalltalk code.
> >
> > While I am not familiar with the static type system in eToys, I am not
> > seeing how a static type system in eToys would be similar at all with
> > a static type system for Smalltalk code either.
> >
> > Andres.
> >
> >
>
>




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