[Vm-dev] positive32BitValueOf: fail with LargePositiveInteger

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 10.10.2010, at 13:05, stephane ducasse wrote:

> Yes I saw and I appreciated. Now my point is that some assumptions (like that mariano did not read books 
> are bad). Now mariano told me that he will check more. And this is bad because mariano is helping a lot 
> people so we all lost something.
> 
> Stef

I don't see how "we all lost something", we gained something instead. Knowing which question is basic and which is advanced is not easy. How SmallIntegers are represented in the Squeak VM is something very basic, so it was appropriate to mention that.

And as Nicolas pointed out, not a single answer was "RTFM", nobody called anyone an idiot. There were 3 different actual explanations. No reason you get all upset about it. Relax, all is fine :)

That is, unless there is a hidden problem you did not mention. But in that case it would be better to name it.

- Bert -

>>> Why do you all think that mariano is not trying to learn?
>>> He is! He read all the chapters available and books on the topics.
>>> Now may be tell him simply that he is an idiot.
>>> This would be more efficient. But Mariano is a really smart guy so may be
>>> we can also tell him to do ruby or python and we can stay in our nice little
>>> club or we can consider that learning alone is difficult.
>>> 
>>> Stef
>>> 
>> 
>> Apologize to Mariano,
>> Sure we got a little upset by the gap between the level of the
>> question and the hard task of modifying the VM.
>> But stephane is right, we all have the right to be idiot, and most of
>> us are, sometimes (I recently asked a very stupid question about
>> Heap).
>> The spirit behind Smalltalk is not to build walls around complex
>> things, and reserve the knowledge to a happy few cast, and ideally
>> this should apply to the VM too (otherwise, no use to specify it in
>> pseudo Smalltalk code).
>> 
>> But Steph, you must see the good side of this community: despite the
>> tone of the answers, Mariano got 3 responses driving him to the
>> answer.
>> In other languages I bet this would have been just RTFM.
>> 
>> Nicolas