Costas wrote:
> I found some extesive work done on type specifications for Smalltalk.
> I am now wondering what Smalltalk vendors thought about the specs.
>
>
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/182057.html>
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/55285.htmlI guess they thought these proposal 'overkill',
although some optional type-declaration mechanisms
were implemented.
Spirit of Smalltalk is freedom to use objects any way
you can. As long as it works - great.
What I think is that JavaDoc is great.
It succinctly shows you what types of arguments
you can pass to a method in a library, even if
you don't have the source code available. It then
provides a hyperlink to a class or interface
showing what is required of any class that aims
to 'implement' a type.
STTs form a basis for building a JavaDoc -like
tool for Smalltalk.
But unlike in Java, with STTs you don't need to
declare that your class implements a type.
It is enough you understand what the type
requires - by looking at "SmalltalkDoc" page
about the class. If you KNOW that your object
fullfills those requirements, then you can safely
pass it as an argument to the documented method,
even if you don't have the source-code available.
-Panu Viljamaa
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