On Jan 31, 2014, at 4:50 PM, Pharo4Stef <pharo4Stef@free.fr> wrote:
I donât see how this change make Smalltalk (the language) simpler. For me this change looks more like an obfuscation than a simplification.
How many lectures did you give? It is annoying to have to explain something that usually people do not need to know.
To complement this: in my own experience as a full-time prof, whenever you are teaching and at a given point you need to say: 'I cannot explain this yet' or resort to handwaving there is something wrong. Do I need to explain pooldictionaries to be able to talk about class creation? No, I should not need to do that. I get this feeling with Java all the time. First hello world example in Java is always a mess. public static void main(String[] args) OMG. Start to explain all that just to do a println? Were is the simplicity there? I don't want to have this kind of feeling when I explain Smalltalk.
How should newcomers know how to enter pool dictionaries? I rarely use pool dictionaries and if I will need it I surely have forgotten about this change and expect irritation and frustration.
Newcomers do not use pooldictionaries. In 10 years smalltalking I used them twice.
I agree with Stef that pooldictionaries are advanced features. I have been Smalltalking since 1998 and I have never used them. ---> Save our in-boxes! http://emailcharter.org <--- Johan Fabry - http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry PLEIAD lab - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile