Jerome, the Squeak community purged its codebase of
underscore-assignments and switched to ANSI assignments a long time
ago.  All current and future code in the Squeak codebase uses and will
continue to use ANSI assignment.  Sure, occasionally, someone might
inadvertently revert to an old method from the method history that had
an underscore-assignment, but those are quickly corrected, but you
might be better in that case to get dramatic about a _real_ bug than
superficial one like this.

Now, if you are complaining about external code packages, maybe you
should rephrase to say, "Package XYZ has a lot of problems leaving its
past behind" and direct it at the package owner rather than the entire
community.  Actually, I'd leave out the FUD too.

Beyond that, if you can't get the package owners to do it, there are
multiple tools to change such packages to ANSI assignment for
yourself, thus "creating a future" for them.  :)

 - Chris



On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Jerome Peace
<peace_the_dreamer at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Squeak has a lot of problems leaving its past behind.
>
> It has a lot of problems creating a future for itself.
>
> As a bug tracker certain things set of my alarms. If you want to test code you need to recognize that each preference doubles the number of tests. Assignments are fundamental to any language. To have two forms of assignments and the preferences to determine when each is used and shown doubles the (theoretical) work of proving the code correct.
>
> Underscores are ascii. Backarrows are Utf-8. The use of backarrows glyphs in character sets where underscores glyphs should be harks back to a character set that predates ascii and would have no modern description.
>
> In practice having the two forms available means that underscores will always creep in to code depositories. The effort to eliminate them so that underscores can be used as characters in variables will continue to fail.
>
> a_b_c_d := airplane .
>
> Will forever mean two different things and be very dangerous code to write.
> One form of assignment will suffice and help secure a future for squeak and smalltalk.
>
> Two forms will forever be a contentious issue. The point of having a language is exchanging thoughts with others. Squeak needs to be compliant with smalltalks that consider a_b_c_d a word not four.
>
> Cuis is a very good effort. Juan will stubbornly stick to what comforts him. Squeak belongs to more than Juan. It needs to reach the future. This nostalgia about assignments prevents it progress.
>
> I don't write this list often these days. Strong feeling about this stumbling block prompts this outburst. Deprecate the use of underscore for assignment. Guide squeak to its future by letting it let go of this portion of its past.
>
> Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace
>
>
>
>