----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Juan Vuletich" <juan at jvuletich.org>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" 
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] keeping arrow for assignment operator


> Joshua Gargus wrote:
>> Juan Vuletich wrote:
>>
>>> There's not a real consensus in this area. Many people (me included)
>>> really prefer the left arrow for assignment and will not accept others
>>> to prevent us from doing so. Please don't promise that. Switch to :=
>>> only if you want.
>>>
>>
>> I usually agree with what you write, but this is simply wrong.  There is
>> not *unanimous* consensus that left-arrow should be deprecated, but when
>> has there ever been, in the Squeak community?  However, there is
>> certainly a consensus.  You're free to use an old/modified Squeak that
>> support underscore-assignment-rendered-as-an-arrow, but the community
>> has clearly decided otherwise (please don't make me dig for references,
>> but I will if I have to).
>>
> This community doesn't even have a consensus on the way to make decisions. 
> These are not my words, but they say what I think: "Historically, 
> decisions have been made by the people screaming the loudest or the 
> longest. We need to work out a way to fix this and to come to a process by 
> which we can make decisions that are acceptable to the community at 
> large." Only when there is a process set up to make decisions, and it is 
> applied to issues like this, you can say there is consensus. This has not 
> happened yet. And I do really hope it will happen this year.
>
>> You shouldn't muddy the waters for Squeak newcomers who haven't
>> experienced the history first-hand.  Underscore assignment is on the way
>> out.  Period.
>>
>
> No it is not. You have no authority to say so. Perhaps the board has it. 
> But not you. I'm sorry.
>
>> I like the look of the left-arrow myself, but there's no reason that a
>> pretty-printer can't render it that way; unfortunately nobody has
>> stepped up to make that a reality.  On the other hand, I look forward to
>> when underscore-assignment is not only deprecated, but completely
>> disallowed, so that I can, for example, program OpenGL in Squeak using
>> identical constant names (eg: GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT instead of
>> GLColorBufferBit).
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Josh
>>
>>
> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich
>