Fear and loathing of the "perlification" of Smalltalk

Peter William Lount peter at smalltalk.org
Wed Sep 5 00:45:45 UTC 2007


Alan Kay wrote:
> ...
>
> Wrt Smalltalk (or any language), I think being able to judiciously 
> extend the syntax is a good idea (though often misused), but it needs 
> to be done at the same level as regular programming (so it can be used 
> by any base version of the language).
>
>

Hi,

I fully agree with Alan's statement above particularly the first part: 
"I think being able to judiciously extend the syntax is a good idea 
(though often misused)". That is exactly the fear that I have with the 
extensions going on by the various Smalltalk implementations. It creates 
a highly fragmented language environment. There are already 25+ versions 
of smalltalk out there. I gather that Smalltalk is following the Unix 
and Linux model where there are hundreds of versions rather than the 
Microsoft and Java model where there is just one version. (Ok there are 
multiple versions of Windows and Java but you get the point).

I wonder Alan, if you could, expand on what you mean by "but it needs to 
be done at the same level as regular programming (so it can be used by 
any base version of the language)"?

Thanks.

Peter



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