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Srinivas JONNALAGADDA

Hello

Hello!

My name is JONNALAGADDA Srinivas (known as `JS'). I am new to Redline, and this is my first post here. James Ladd and all the contributors are filling an important gap -- a gap that a completed and supported Bistro could have filled (alas)!

(1) I have read some of the threads that discuss the differences in development models (and philosophies) of Smalltalk and Java. IMHO, a purist Smalltalk approach that is image-oriented will not help a wider adoption of Redline. I agree with James that a file-oriented environment is very important to have, when working in the Java world. A most important reason is the existing Java tooling infrastructure.

(2) A quick glance has (so far) not helped me understand how Redline deals with Java interfaces. Do interfaces show in the superclass hierarchy? Or do they have a different mechanism w.r.t. isKindOf: and isMemberOf:? Some illustration would help. Thanks.

(3) Protocols with code (a la traits, only more) and mixins are good areas to explore in these early stages. It is usually very difficult to bolt them on later. Gilad Bracha's Newspeak could be an interesting reference -- it is more general: any class can be mixed-in!

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James Ladd

Re: Hello

Welcome JS,

Bistro was one of my inspirations for Redline!
More responses are inline below.

I look forward to more posts from you.

- James.

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Srinivas JONNALAGADDA <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello!

My name is JONNALAGADDA Srinivas (known as `JS'). I am new to Redline, and this is my first post here. James Ladd and all the contributors are filling an important gap -- a gap that a completed and supported Bistro could have filled (alas)!

(1) I have read some of the threads that discuss the differences in development models (and philosophies) of Smalltalk and Java. IMHO, a purist Smalltalk approach that is image-oriented will not help a wider adoption of Redline. I agree with James that a file-oriented environment is very important to have, when working in the Java world. A most important reason is the existing Java tooling infrastructure.

Glad you like the approach we are taking.
Hopefully you will have some friends who might like to try Redline as well.

(2) A quick glance has (so far) not helped me understand how Redline deals with Java interfaces. Do interfaces show in the superclass hierarchy? Or do they have a different mechanism w.r.t. isKindOf: and isMemberOf:? Some illustration would help. Thanks.

Java interfaces are not yet catered for.
The general approach for now is to adapt Java classes for their use in Smalltalk, rather than generate a class for an interface to be used in Java.
I can look into interface support should it grow in importance.

(3) Protocols with code (a la traits, only more) and mixins are good areas to explore in these early stages. It is usually very difficult to bolt them on later. Gilad Bracha's Newspeak could be an interesting reference -- it is more general: any class can be mixed-in!

There is nothing stopping Redline from having traits/mixins/protocols. In fact you can modify an existing class right now
without its source code just be sending messages to the Class. Supporting a 'general' mix-all-of-this-into method would not
be hard. Speaking with Sean about this.

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Again - Welcome - We hope you enjoy Redline.

Srinivas JONNALAGADDA

Re: Hello

Thank you, James, for your reply!

On Friday, 14 December 2012 02:30:42 UTC+5:30, jamesl wrote:

Java interfaces are not yet catered for.
The general approach for now is to adapt Java classes for their use in Smalltalk, rather than generate a class for an interface to be used in Java.
I can look into interface support should it grow in importance.

In enterprise Java applications, we frequently encounter service provisioning classes whose methods have parameters of interface types. Some dependency injection frameworks depend on interface types too. Should we need to send an instance of a Redline class into one such method, the instance will need to carry some additional type information pertaining to the required interface(s).

There may not be a pressing need right now, but it is good to keep it on the back burner!

There is nothing stopping Redline from having traits/mixins/protocols. In fact you can modify an existing class right now
without its source code just be sending messages to the Class. Supporting a 'general' mix-all-of-this-into method would not
be hard. Speaking with Sean about this.

Pharo has itself implemented traits. It is reasonably simple, and it works. I am not in agreement with their stated future direction[1] in Pharo where traits have state, though.

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[1] http://book.pharo-project.org/book/LanguageAndLibraries/Traits/?_s=wlP0YD17KY2oIrEY&_k=jgRRR2nWiU1Axo_w&_n&49