Hi!

Daniel P Zepeda wrote:
> On Sep 20, 2009, at 7:47 PM, Michael van der Gulik wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Ross Boylan <ross at biostat.ucsf.edu> 
>>> Is there any namespace or similar mechanism that it would be advisable
>>> to use?
>>
>> Not really. People usually prefix their class names to avoid naming 
>> collisions.
>>
>> I'm developing a namespaces architecture that will run on Squeak. It 
>> works and I'm writing namespaced code using it, but it is not ready 
>> for general use. If people are interested, I could concentrate my 
>> efforts on making it usable, but so far I've seen more disinterest 
>> than interest.
>>
>> http://gulik.pbworks.com/Namespaces - including links to an image.
> 
> I think this work is important for more wide-spread acceptance of Squeak 
> Smalltalk and its forks. I know it is only anecdotal evidence, but one 
> of the first things I missed when starting an actual project was 
> namespaces. After using languages that have support for namespaces, 
> using the widely accepted practice of "just prefixing your classes with 
> a two letter prefix" seems quaint and archaic. While that practice gets 
> the job done, it's a turn-off to me, and I imagine that others coming to 
> the language feel the same.
> 
> So while you may be getting disinterest from the established community, 
> again, I think that it would boost the popularity and acceptance by 
> experienced programmers coming to Smalltalk from other 'namespaced' 
> languages.

Just a few notes:

- The "established community" has a different view on namespaces in the 
sense that most of us value the absence of a lot of "pain" that the 
other "namespaced languages" thrust upon us.

- I too :) have implemented a namespace proposal for Squeak, perhaps the 
best article I wrote about it is here:

	http://swiki.krampe.se/gohu/32

It is written in a cheeky style because as you may guess, the subject is 
slightly touchy :). I wrote that stuff because it was a fun experiment.

And oh, I did fire up my code in latest trunk when I was down in Brest, 
and it seemed to work fine.

Regarding the "boost" you mention... well, perhaps. But it is hard to 
make a really good non-intrusive namespace system that doesn't sabotage 
the rest of the Smalltalk experience.

regards, Göran

PS. No, I don't really think we NEED Namespaces that much (compared to 
other things). But if we do end up adding them I really, really, REALLY 
think we should do them in a lightweight smart manner and not just 
blindly copy some approach from another language with drastically 
different characteristics.