On 28/08/07, Fabio Filasieno <fabio.filasieno at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 28, 2007, at 1:38 PM, Alan Lovejoy wrote:
>
> Denis Kudriashov wrote:
>
> 2007/8/27, Alan Lovejoy <squeak-dev.sourcery at forum-mail.net
> <mailto:squeak-dev.sourcery at forum-mail.net>>:
>
>     There haven't been all that many syntax changes to Smalltalk since its
>     public release as ST80.  Off the top of my head, I can list the
>     following:
>
>
> These changes does not have an influence on language core, language
> semantics. Its just was some convenient constructions for building special
> objects. But when we put in Smalltalk new operator we change it semantics.
> Why we must do it?
> Bert implemented it in clean Smalltalk without any language changes. Why it
> is not enough?
>
>
> There are two issues:
>
> 1) Are the proposed "pipes" a good idea at all?  Is it good programming
> style--or an abusive practice?
>
>
> I remember a sentence of Alan Kay related to education stating that
> education is about learning powerful ideas and it was said in the context of
> describing what a metacircular interpreter is. Understanding this powerful
> ideas is difficult and requires experience.
>
> In my opinion, the homoiconic system written is itself is the powerful idea
> in Smalltalk. But before trying what it means to work in an homoiconic
> system, my judgement was "who cares". But then my opinion changed, as soon
> as I tried squeak.
>
> Same for the pipe. The pipe is one of those powerful ideas. And you will
> need experience in using it. Look at what the pipe did for Unix. The pipe IS
> the powerful idea in UNIX around which a whole culture of sharing was built.
> I'm not talking only of quality software artifacts, but an entire culture of
> people sharing small pieces of art. Showing how a piece of code written for
> specific context can be used in another one. This is the job of the artist,
> to show that there is always a new context.
>
> - one guy would write `ls`
> - another guy would write `grep`
> - another guy would write `tar`
> - another guy would write `gzip`
> ... etc ...
>
> And everyone has a scriptable archiving system for free, absolutely for
> free.
>
> Things like:
>
> select:thenCollect:
>
> It very very ugly bloat. It should removed instantly. To a unix user and to
> functional programmer this is something to be ashamed of. This is REALLY bad
> as it also appears in general purpose collection libraries !!!
>

Bloat you say? but if implemented differently it can improve
performance and transform collection using single loop. Instead of:
	^ (self select: selectBlock) collect: collectBlock
or with pipe syntax:
^ self select: selectBlock | collect: collectBlock

it can be rewritten to:
   | newColl |
   newColl := self species new.
    self do: [ :each | (selectBlock value: each) ifTrue: [ newColl
add: (collectBlock value:each) ] ]
  ^ newColl.

But yes, as a general approach it will be a bloat to implement tons of
methods which will be a composition of different methods of collection
transformations.
That's where the pipes can propose something better and cleaner. But
at the same time, often suboptimal.

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.