[ANSI-Smalltalk] on the pitfalls of design... (short :-)

[Paolo Bonzini]

>>>  (OrderedCollection new   <-  true  <-  false  <-  #foo) 
>> No, this cannot work, because by your definition you have
>>
>> Collection >> <-anObject
>>     self add: anObject
> I don't think I gave the above definition anywhere (did I?).
> It's not my definition.  The definition I had in mind was
> 
>  Object >> <- anObject
>   ^ OrderedCollection new add: self; add: anObject; yourself

The above code gives

   OrderedCollection (OrderedCollection (OrderedCollection
      (OrderedCollection () true ) false ) #foo )

I also agree going on with this is pointless, I don't want to have "the 
last word" on anything.  Consensus should be reached by discussion.

But I think we *can* get a lesson we all agree with, from this thread:

>> Defining new language elements is hard.  
>
> As I already said, this is not about defining new elements

A "new language element" is anything whose use can become pervasive 
enough that it becomes a common language idiom.  It need not have any 
syntactic part in it, it *can* be a couple of messages as in your 
example -- but this does not mean we need to be any less careful in 
defining it.

Paolo