[squeak-dev] Renaming "Squeak"

David Zmick dz0004455 at gmail.com
Thu May 15 01:12:32 UTC 2008


>Wasn't my point. I think the long form is clearer. One of the great
>things about Smalltalk is the simple object+message syntax. Brace
>notation is something else. It can be handy at times, but I think the
>other form is clearer.

Yes, I agree, the first form is smaller, but to a causal observer, the
second form makes more sense.  I personally aim for readbility of my code,
even by people that do not know the programming language, I would choose the
second choice!


On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 5:07 PM, David Mitchell <david.mitchell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > >  But, if you are trying to write code that is portable across Smalltalk
> > >  dialects, you avoid brace notation.
> >
> > All dialects have a way to modify the parser don't they (probably a
> > really simple way in many of them)?  Maybe an alternative would be to
> > just make a package that adds the syntax to any Smalltalk.  Then
> > people could use it if the want and just site the package as a
> > dependancy.
>
> I think modifying the parser is a pretty big expectation for an
> application or framework.
>
> >
> > >  As I think it would be easier to update. I use literal forms to save
> > >  myself typing but when I commit code, I'd rather have the long form.
> > >  In fact, I've sent #sourceString to literal arrays so I could get the
> > >  long form without all the typing.
> >
> > That is a good way of doing it, but the maintenance cost comes from
> > how much code is there, not how much was typed.  This is a huge
> > problem Java has.  Java wizards say "It doesn't matter how verbose the
> > syntax is, I just generate all the boilerplate".  But that doesn't
> > help the guy maintaining the code very much.
> >
>
> Wasn't my point. I think the long form is clearer. One of the great
> things about Smalltalk is the simple object+message syntax. Brace
> notation is something else. It can be handy at times, but I think the
> other form is clearer.
>
>


-- 
David Zmick
/dz0004455\
http://dz0004455.googlepages.com
http://dz0004455.blogspot.com
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