Note that I'm not advocating removing PoolDictionaries. Just to have the subclassing template not mention them. I would leave the subclassing message with the poolDictionaries: argument in the system for people to use it if they want to. On Nov 14, 2013, at 7:02 AM, jtuchel@objektfabrik.de wrote:
Hi,
I'd like to draw your attention to something else: consistency.
I remember the days when Cincom added Namespaces to classes and the class definition template changed drastically. It took me quite a while to get used to that. And there is this other aspect in the consistency field: most Smalltalk literature will include and address that line. If you learn Smalltalk, such small differences can cause trouble.
And what if I need PoolDictionaries? How hard will it be to find the place to add my reference to them? A fair amount of Pharo code may not make much use of PoolDictionaries, but other dialects do. I know Pharo has the concept of "never look back" and it is good to be prepared to cut off old strings. But there is a price to it.
Seaside, apart from being a great web framework, has achieved something that was excellent and helped the whole Smalltalk universe make a leap forward: all Smalltalk dialects moved closer together and honestly worked on being more compatible. Suggestions like this may not break much of this per se, but many such cracks make a wide canyon. I find the argument that a certain line of code may irritate students a bit weak. It may make their life harder once they read code from other dialects. Should we remove class browsers because students are used to use text editors?
Just my 2 cents
Joachim
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