On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:41:20 -0700, Bert Freudenberg  
<bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:

> In my 3.8-based image this matched 96 of 50000 methods. These are
> mostly bit arithmetic and conditionals, and a few occurrences of
> multiple select:/collect:/do:'s. But honestly, none of them, even the
> latter, would benefit (IMHO) from the pipe operator.

I would be willing to concede the possibility that the pipe might benefit  
in ways not obvious from those 96 methods. I think the proposer suggested  
a shifting of paradigms, which I'm all about and for, baby--as long as we  
can switch back if the new paradigm isn't as good as the old one. But I  
haven't seen anything yet.

> I have the impression that Smalltalk has hit a "sweet spot" - there
> may be a few additions (compile-time expressions anyone?) but
> basically it is very succinct in expressing what the underlying
> system does, namely, sending messages to objects. Other languages
> needed to add a lot more over the years as they started out with a
> rather limited model, but if you start with a general model like
> Smalltalk did (which in turn was the result of many experiments) it
> is not necessary to add that much.

It is tough to beat a good simplicity. (Make everything as simple as is  
possible, but not simpler?)

> Or, if you do it, it wouldn't be
> Smalltalk anymore (and that's in fact what Alan's group now is
> working on, there is a whole lot of experimenting with syntax going
> on using Meta).

Neat.