[squeak-dev] Selectors with underscores

Torsten Bergmann astares at gmx.de
Fri Mar 12 15:31:11 UTC 2010


Hi Sam,

>Supporting underscores in selectors makes a significant change to how the
>code looks to the eyes
>You can argue its not that important, or folks should just change and 
>enjoy it, but it does impact readability.

You seem to miss my point here. I AGREE with you regarding readability
 - since I like well written Smalltalk code in the same way you like it. 

A #fooBar is always better than a #foo_Bar! Nothing said about it -
I have no beard but appreciate reading/writing clean Smalltalk 
 code since 1994...


BUT:

CALL_ME_BACK: is also more readable than CALLMEBACK in an 
FFI callback, especially when the C function has the same name

The other Smalltalks allowed to use underscores in selectors 
and still have well written and readable Smalltalk methods. 
    
You may argue that this is due to their commercial nature -
but I believe it's because Smalltalk people really use this 
feature carefully.
     
I think you fear that after introducing this change anybody 
is instantly_switching_to_writing_ALL_its_method_selectors_with_underscores
- which I just doubt! 

Therefore I would like to go the way Bert nicely described as:
  Supporting them: +1
  Using them: -1

It's an interesting discussion - I should have read the warning in 
Ians original changeset more clearly. It said:

  "Use of this changeset has been officially condemned by the 
   Independent Board of Syntactical Aesthetics for Squeak."  :)

>Just 2r11 from a "legacy" Smalltalker who, yes, still uses MVC, albeit
>running in parallel in a custom VM on a 64-core Tilera chip.  ;-)

How is the project going, havent heard from it since 2008?

></previous_post_eaten_by_LotusNotes>

Since Notes-UI is written in Java I think underscores are OK here

Bye
T.






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