On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 12:14 PM, Richard Sargent < richard.sargent@gemtalksystems.com> wrote:
Please be careful of complicating the language syntax. Perhaps the better solution is to improve the optimizer until it can recognize the fact that the expression really is constant and can inline the generated code.
That's just implementation details :) (extending the language syntax vs pre-processing & inlining code). I don't care, as long as we eventually have the ability to do simple Dictionary literals (like we do with strings & arrays).
I had an interesting lesson in this just the other day from Martin McClure. I had been asking for a feature like VA Smalltalk's "compile-time constant". I am now convinced that is not the way to go.
Can you elaborate on that more? What did Martin McClure say? (Why did you change your mind that a compile-time constant (I'm not sure what that is, actually) is not the way to go?)