Thanks Tobias and Igor for your thoughts about this increment/decrement theme. @Tobias: what kind of side effect(s) are you talking about? I don't understand, sorry. @Igor, Yes, I completely agree with you that Smalltalk should not transform to a C++ like dialect. At first, I simply would like wanted ++ -- (monadic) and for that matter also += -= *= and /= (dyadic) as messages for the Integer classes, possibly as primitive methods. But then again, If this would be implemented, I can imagine people using ugly and hard to read statement trains like anotherInt += anInt ++ * 1234 , I don't find these constructs very nice either.. So, after realizing this.. perhaps you're right: just let it be. (probably would have needed here () as wel) Greetings from Ravensburg area TedvG