Hey!
Just for some "food for thought", you may want to read the parts under heading "Literal Smalltalk arrays" and the section following - "Sidestory: Adding literal Dictionaries to Smalltalk?"
...at:
http://goran.krampe.se/2012/05/08/literal-arrays-vs-json-vs-ston-vs-tirade/
regards, Göran Yes, that is a good write up, touching on all kinds of aspects, balanced too. Pretty complicated subject, right ? ;-)
:)
As you mention it is quite hard to reach an agreement. Objectives/goals are different for everybody.
Since we had those discussions long ago, I've actually grown quite used to writing
{ #foo->1. #bar->2 } asDictionary #{ #foo->1. #bar->2 } could do it for literal ones :)
I know it is not super efficient, or super compact, but I can certainly live with it.