[ANSI-Smalltalk] squeakers

[Panu Logic]

Andres Valloud wrote:
> At one point I wrote an SUnit ANSI test suite for collections.  
> Something I noticed is that it is quite easy to depend on the feature 
> you want to test to write the test in the first place.  Particularly 
> when writing tests for things like Array or SortedCollection, the 
> dependency on at: and at:put: becomes obvious and the whole exercise 
> appears to become a tautology.

Cycles in language-specifications can be avoided by writing the spec in 
a  language separate from the language being specified. No doubt any 
Smalltalk standard will need to rely on natural language.  But if parts 
of the spec can be written in Smalltalk itself, so much better, because 
of the  added rigor.

But consider English for a second.  Its grammar is specified in English 
that's augmented with a few words that only make sense in the context of 
the grammar ("verb", "noun", "plural" ...) - which are defined in terms 
of the basic, everyday English.   Similarly what you seem to be 
proposing is "augmenting"   Collections with constructs whose sole 
purpose is to aid in writing the '"standard":  #firstElement, 
#secondElement,  etc.

I see no problem with this.  It makes sense from the viewpoint that 
natural language standards are required to use similar means in their 
standards.

-Panu Viljamaa