"Frank Mueller" <frank at mweb.de> writes:
> one thing I really love in Smalltalk after programming years in
> different languages (and since 1996 in Java) is the simplicity and
> the really straight concept. One point is, that I don't have to deal
> with imports (or my IDE doesn't has to deal with it), I just wirte
> the class name and it's OK. All I need is in my image. Oh, yes, many
> of those classes have a little prefix of two or three chars, but who
> cares? That makes it allways clear, which implementation I use. So
> even in VisualWorks I use my TLAs as prefix, it makes live more
> simple.


Yes, it is a very nice thing about the Smalltalk feel.

It seems that you run into problems, though, when you scale from one
thousand classes simultaneously loaded, to tens of thousands, as is
happening with Squeak over time.  With such a large number of global
names, a hierarchical naming scheme is very helpful.  At the same
time, working with hierarchical names is inevitably less convenient,
because you have to deal with prefixes and imports all the time.

It points to an interesting goal namespace-system designers might
think about: can you make a system that scales in both directions?
Can you have a system with hierarchal names, out of which you can
build a nice Smalltalk80-ish 1000-name subspace where you do not need
prefixes and imports?


-Lex