On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 05:23:28PM -0300, Esteban A. Maringolo wrote:

What are the odds?

100%, this _always_ happens to some student. (You just need to omit a single semicolon and you've just broke it.)

Hi I wrote proposal in issue 2017-08-18 0:52 GMT+02:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works>:

Is this a goal we can all share for 7.0?

Sort out the expert tools (like git etc), but equally enable that simplicity you expect for a child/newbie/expert...

I'm in!

Tim

Sent from my iPhone

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On 17 Aug 2017, at 20:52, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi guys

my son coded in Pharo 60

testGuessUrlPart

|dg8| dg8 := GameItem new; name: 'Dragon Quest VIII : Journey Of The Cursed King'; console: 'PS2'. self assert: dg8 guessUrlPart equals: 'dragonquestviiijourneyofthecursedking'

and guess what he broke the system.

We should not accept such kind of behavior. name: should not change the name of the class.

I do not know the solution but I fear when I will teach 160 students this fall. We should make sure that Pharo is not a system only for experts!

any idea is welcome

https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20322/name-sent-to-a-class-SHOULD-NOT- automatically-rename-and-destroy-the-class

Stef

I vote for setClassName: Brad Selfridge

On Aug 20, 2017, at 5:30 AM, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for all the information. In Pharo 70 Object does not understand name so it will already be a step in the right direction.

I think that we should do two things. - Address simply this problem for example using setName: or setClassName: instead of name: - start to prototype for a future a solution where the reflective calls are clearly identified.

Stef

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On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Luke Gorrie <luke@snabb.co> wrote: On 17 August 2017 at 21:52, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We should not accept such kind of behavior. name: should not change the name of the class.

I had exactly such a problem a couple of weeks ago :).

I write MyClass on: foo; name: x; yourself'but I forgot the ^ return in MyClass class>>on: and so called name: on the class instead of the instance. Hilarity ensued :).

its inconsistent to start using (set) in front of the name of methods and unnecessary className: makes more sense to me Another way to do this instead have something like classMetaData which can be a dictionary containing all the data like name of the class, method dictionary etc this way we ensure that what happened with name does not happen with other methods too that may find themselves in a name conflict by an unaware user. Or we can provide both ways or something else. Class name has caused me pain too and I am no newbie , when I was making an API for Blender it clashed with the name of the 3d objects. So this is definitely not newbie orientated problem , its a fundamental problem. I dont mind which solution you guys follow , afterall its easy to solve cause its easy to override any solution I don't like. The beauty of Smalltalk :) On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 11:05 AM Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

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On 20 Aug 2017, at 23:48, Brad <bsselfridge@gmail.com> wrote:

I vote for setClassName:

setName: is better because this is what is there since many many years… and by just using it we must need to deprecate one method, not two.

Marcus

I'd prefer to not use `setName:` nor `setClassName:` as `setX:`/`setX:Y:` is often used as a constructor initialization pattern (as per Kent Beck's Smalltalk book). Using `className:` could be confusing, as it could be unclear whether you are changing the name of the class itself, or the name of the class of the class (the "Class class" class :)). Maybe `changeNameTo:` to explicitly state the intent?

It indirectly becomes some sort of "reserved word" of the language.

Class has many such methods (and I've destroyed my image many times before I subconsciously learned to avoid them), but only name tends to be problematic so introducing "special" methods for meta methods seems pointless, as a person doing metaprogramming would (must) take the care anyway to distinguish on which side they are working on. Peter On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 3:08 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo <emaringolo@gmail.com> wrote:

I avoid get/set prefixes in method selectors, however it is a "good practice pattern" the use of the "set" prefix as a private accessor.

I use it to build initialized instances,

MyClass class>>#attribute: anObject ^self new setAttribute: aString

In some cases MyClass doesn't have the `#attribute:` setter because it's not meant to be modified externally.

In the case of the `name` setter for a class, adding the `class` prefix is redundant, so I think that `setName:` is the right selector to use.

It's like the Clipboard class, that has the `clipboardText:` selector instead of `text:` or something similar, but without the redundant `clipboard` prefix.

But without diverting from the main topic, I think that the `name` accessor is one of the things that causes a lot of trouble because of unanticipated side effects. It indirectly becomes some sort of "reserved word" of the language.

Also `name` is a common property in many domain objects, and creating the accessors will create name:/name1 selectors, which is confusing for newcomers as well, because they'd expect the #name getter instead of #name1.

Regards,

Esteban A. Maringolo

2017-08-21 9:42 GMT-03:00 Dimitris Chloupis <kilon.alios@gmail.com>:

...

its inconsistent to start using (set) in front of the name of methods and unnecessary

className:

makes more sense to me

Another way to do this instead have something like classMetaData which can be a dictionary containing all the data like name of the class, method dictionary etc this way we ensure that what happened with name does not happen with other methods too that may find themselves in a name conflict by an unaware user.

Or we can provide both ways or something else.

Class name has caused me pain too and I am no newbie , when I was making an API for Blender it clashed with the name of the 3d objects. So this is definitely not newbie orientated problem , its a fundamental problem.

I dont mind which solution you guys follow , afterall its easy to solve cause its easy to override any solution I don't like. The beauty of Smalltalk :)

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 11:05 AM Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

...

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On 20 Aug 2017, at 23:48, Brad <bsselfridge@gmail.com> wrote:

I vote for setClassName:

setName: is better because this is what is there since many many years… and by just using it we must need to deprecate one method, not two.

Marcus