On 14 Dec 2013, at 22:13, St�phane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> wrote:

Hi 

I do not understand why we deprecate methodDictionary and not methodDict (What a really bad name)
I hate this inconsistent and lame name like methodDict and 

Marcus you mention on the bug entry

nobody should access methodDict directly
-> so why have a "nice" accessor for something not to be used?

but I have 103 send of methodDict in my image 

Yes, I am slowly removing them, but that takes time (I removed quite a lot over the last months! A *lot*!)
I even added a lint rule detecting calls to #methodDict.

So I do not get it and personally I would not deprecate methodDictionary and I would remove 
methodDict because it sucks!

methodDict should *never* be used from the outside. It�s far too easy to get problems because you modify the dictionary
without e.g. invalidating the VM cache or telling the system.

And it gets *much* easier to read:

methodDict values �> methods
methodDict keys �> selectors
methodDict size > 0 �> #hasMethods
and so on� it�s amazing how much more readable code gets.

So why do we provide a �nice� selector �methodDictionary� if this is a private accessor for internal state?
If we do that it communicates �use me�! And you should not. If you want to use it, you know what you are doing
and you know #methodDict.

And if people use it, the #methodDict is so deep in the brain of people that they never used #methoDictionary
(there where maybe 5 senders�).

Marcus