election details *PLEASE READ*
Roel Wuyts
Roel.Wuyts at ulb.ac.be
Wed Feb 21 21:52:45 UTC 2007
I drink do that. Cheers Andreas.
It's fun that especially a very open and reflective language like
Smalltalk actually is not extended very much (or only within small
research projects not taken up by the community). Where are the macro
systems ? Variable length argument lists ? Nifty versioning and
packaging systems ? Monads ? Usable typing systems ? etc. etc.
On 21 Feb 2007, at 21 February/07:59, Andreas Raab wrote:
>>> 4) What do you believe is the future of Smalltalk?
>> I believe every other language is asymptotically approaching
>> Smalltalk.
>
> Hm. Can't really let this statement stand by itself. While I think
> (hope) it isn't meant that way I find ignorance one of the hardest
> things to tolerate. Saying that "every other language is
> asymptotically approaching Smalltalk" sounds too much like "and
> therefore we can safely ignore them" to my mind. My wish for people
> representing Squeak (not only, but particularly those) would be to
> be open and engaging in discussion about the strengths and
> weaknesses of each system and language. This means acknowledging
> that other languages (including Java) have their strengths (yes,
> including Java) and that a discussion (regardless of its outcome)
> about what parts may be worthwhile to adopt in the context of
> Squeak is desirable and should be held with an open mind towards
> improving both language and system.
>
> Personally, I think Python is a good example in this regard. There
> are a lot of new features proposed every time and they are often
> weighed based on how "Pythonic" they feel (which is a beautifully
> underspecified term to keep the discussion open and discuss how a
> feature relates in the context of other language features). And
> while I will admit that language changes can go overboard (recently
> I discovered "whitespaceless" Python which is about as *disgusting*
> a language abuse as they get) a lot of good features get integrated
> in Python by looking at and learning from other languages and systems.
>
> In any case, I think it is important for people representing Squeak
> to stay open to improvements *to the language* and not just to
> claim that "eventually, every other language will get there so
> really there will never, ever be anything to learn here".
>
> Cheers,
> - Andreas
>
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