On 6/7/2010 12:17 PM, Niko Schwarz wrote:
Well, I'm just arguing that in Ruby, the simple convention that
negative indices start from left to right map to a zoo of different
methods in Smalltalk.
You didn't comment on:
('hello' from: 2 toFromEnd: 2) should = 'ell'
Would that find your blessing?
niko
What's the goal, to be more like Ruby? If that's the case I'm sure
there's a thousand things you could change, but it's not Ruby, it's
Smalltalk. Ruby seems to have a style where you can send just about
anything to a method and it tries to figure out what to do based on the
type of the arg, they like magic and the smaller API; Smalltalk tends to
just have a dozen different but similarly named methods that let you
accomplish the same thing. I prefer that latter style, less magic and
more smaller simpler well factored methods with a larger API and less
implicit assumptions.
Personally, I don't like a lot of unspoken assumptions like negative
indices meaning something that isn't stated in the method name, so yes I
like...
('hello' from: 2 toFromEnd: 2) should = 'ell'
better than using negative indices. Not sure I like #from:toFromEnd: as
the selector name, but I like the spirit of it, it makes it explicit.
I'd probably like #copyFrom:fromEnd: better, but that's just personal
preference as it goes better with #copyFrom:to: which would seem to be a
related method in that protocol.
I really don't want to learn 10 different ways to use #at:, I'd rather
see 10 similarly named methods each doing it one way that look like
they're all variations of a theme. When someone comes up with a new
idea like #copyFrom:fromEnd:, it's easier to add that than it is to go
back and patch #at: to do something new, it allows the system to grow
over time yet remain stable for existing code.
--
Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com
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