I've got a suggestion...

It's K? Has to be some APL based language you're referring to.

More probably J. It's main market is financial number crunching. It's faster to develop with and far more efficient than competing technologies.

Bryan,
lol. Follow the links in the post I linked to (mine)

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by Rich Demers

Yeah, it could be APL, the only other language I've used with the power and simplicity to achieve Smalltalk's level of productivity, but if you think Smalltalk's syntax is a barrior to entry for the "stubbornly ignorant," you should show them APL's keyboard symbols!

BTW, there's a lot of cool ideas in APL that could be migrated into Smalltalk, but then there really is a paradigm difference between these languages; matrix manipulation for APL vs objects for Smalltalk.

Take a look at F-Script. It version of Smalltalk with some APL concepts added.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by Rich Demers

Roger,

I read the F-Script paper. It's interesting how little would be needed to radically extend the expressive power of Smalltalk syntax. But don't expect the existing Smalltalk vendors to make such a jump; they're too involved in preserving and promoting what they already have.

I've said this before; as good as Smalltalk is, and as far beyond the curly-brace languages as it is, something better will come long if no effort is made to evolve Smalltalk in a deliberate way.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by James Robertson

Less is more. What syntax extensions does Smalltalk actually need?

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by Rich Demers

Jim,

And sometimes less is just less. Read the F-Script paper, or better yet, download APL and play with it. (I know you're busy!)

As powerful as Smalltalk's collection classes are, the Array-oriented syntax, functions and operators of APL go a lot further in giving you the ability to say more with less. F-Script does a great job of integrating them into Smalltalk.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by James Robertson

Rich
Adding syntax to the language is just... I'm sorry, silly. What you end up with by going down that road is cruft that can't be removed.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by James Robertson

Oh, and a couple of other things:

• I've used APL. It's a horrid, write only language. Powerful, yes. Maintainable, no
• Since the audience seems unclear on the concept, JP Morgan uses Smalltalk for the applications in question (we'll have a success story on that fairly soon). The performance critical portions are written in C

Adding syntax to a language in order to "simplify" it or "make it more powerful" is the wrong way to go, IMHO. You can build domain specific languages in Smalltalk easily enough - at least in VW, the compiler and parser are right there, ready to be modified to suit your needs. Attempting to be all things to all people by adding a quick language hack here or there is what the Java and C# people are doing now - and what the C++ people have spent the last 15 years doing. I'm completely unimpressed with the results...

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by Rich Demers

Adding syntax to the language is just... I'm sorry, silly.
Sorry, this is too broad a value judgement; one that can only lead to stagnation. It really depends on what is being added, how extensive it is, and what purpose is being served. The authors of F-Script were careful to address all of these concerns, and their views are worth considering.

APL is a horrid, write only language. Powerful, yes. Maintainable, no.
Yes, it can be, but so can any language, including Smalltalk. It's possible to write "bad" code in any language, but that doesn't mean the good features of the language should be dismissed out-of-hand.

Stagnation is death! Evolve or die. And that applies to Smalltalk, too.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by James Robertson

Adding syntax because of some notional belief that that new syntax means progress is not what I would call progress. Take a look at Seaside, for insycne - continuation based web applications are one of the coolest ideas to come down the pike recently, and support for that did not require new syntax. You're going to have to give me some specific examples of positive additions...

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by Rich Demers

Read the F-Script paper. I'm not talking about abstract principles or the general case of never-ending Java-like syntax extensions. I think the F-Script people have something that's worth serious consideration by the Smalltalk community.

A side issue, which I've written about before, is the lack of an appropriate mechanism or process for community consideration of language changes.

Comment on I've got a suggestion... by alan knight

I read the F-script paper. I wasn't that impressed. It didn't seem to me like an interesting merging of array processing concepts and OO so much as shoe-horning APL array syntax, that didn't do anything with objects, onto Smalltalk. As a result, you could have a different syntax that let you do collect:.

I do think there are some interesting possibilities in having some of the array-processing ideas, but I didn't find that implementation compelling.

Some more info for those interested:

In Smalltalk we deal with one object at a time. With the F-Script extensions, we can deal directly with whole lists of objects. I think this goes beyond the question of providing an alternative syntax to do collect:. Yes, it provides an alternative syntax to collect: (by removing the need for it), but the important point is that it does so with a model that allows us to think directly in terms of whole sets of objects, whereas collect: requires us to think in terms of one object at a time (OOAAT).

At least in my personal experience, it changes (for the better) the way I think when I program. My mind is freed from the OOAAT details, and can be fully applied to reasoning with higher-level abstractions (i.e., whole collections of objects). For me the experience is somewhat similar to that of going from a system with manual memory management to a system with an automatic garbage collector: I can concentrate on more interesting things. It can take some time to free our mind from its OOAAT reflex because, when starting to apply array programming, we tend to constantly mentally translate the array programming model to the more traditional model we were trained to use. When you start to think directly in terms of array programming, you get the benefits of this approach.

The paper describing this model: OOPAL: Integrating Array Programming in Object-Oriented Programming.

You can also read section 20 in the F-Script guide, which compares the Smalltalk collection protocol with the F-Script array programming model.

Some basic examples:

Get the names of the employees:

Smalltalk:

employees collect:[:anEmployee | anEmployee name]

F-Script:

employees name

Get the names of the employees whose age is greater than 30:

Smalltalk:

(employees select:[: anEmployee | anEmployee age > 30]) collect:[: anEmployee | anEmployee name]

F-Script:

employees name at: employees age > 30

Get a list of employees sorted according to their salary:

Smalltalk:

employees asSortedCollection:[:e1 :e2| e1 salary < e2 salary]

F-Script:

employees at: employees salary sort

Increase the salary of each employee by a specific amount:

Smalltalk:

employees with:amounts do:[:anEmployee :anAmount| anEmployee raiseSalary:anAmount]

F-Script:

employees raiseSalary:amounts

Please see the articles The F-Script Smalltalk Extensions and The Squeak Curly Bracket Extension to Smalltalk for my comments.