Hello, jaayer.
The point about Dictionary inconsistency was raised multiple times before. I was among ones of those who did that couple of years ago. What can i say? While it is much better to have consistency, in fact it doesn't really changes much. I don't think that #remove: in a form you proposed will be any userful. I would really keep it simply #shouldNotImplement , because it is unclear what is a least surprising behavior of this method for Dictionary.
Igor why? why remove: does not take the same argument than add: and does what it should?
One might argue, that its more userful to make it same as #removeKey:, other one could point that its should be symmetrical to #add: ,
#add: is not part of the ANSI <abstractDictionary> protocol. It is, however, part of the ANSI <extensibleCollection> protocol: add: addAll: remove: remove:ifAbsent: removeAll:
One could make the argument that if Dictionary elects to implement part of it, it might as well implement the rest too.
but hey, then #do: should be also symmetrical to #add: , isnt? And so it should iterate over associations , not just values. So, it is a can of worms, once you open it , you can never finish the endless discussions :) It is just works in a way how we like (defined). It is like an imaginary numbers in math where sqrt(-1) == i and basta :)
Right... I wasn't planning on going there, but are we basically stuck with #do:, #select: #collect:, #includes: and other such messages operating on the Dictionary's values rather than its associations, forever?
I hope not.