Hi all, Hi Eliot, Hi Clément
Well, you know I'm the opponent here regarding the Immutability naming.
I hate that I have to come back to the naming thing here once again.
But it is rather important for me, since I work on immutability concepts
that are unlike what immutability would mean here. I think it is also
important to know that immutability in most other languages means
"it won't change whatsoever" (including OCaml[1], Racket[2],
Haskell[3], or object-oriented programming in general[4])
Now, I see the need, usefulness, and practical implementation for objects
that cannot be written and hence throw an error, which _then_ can be
circumvented/made be writable. I'm all for it and I like it. Except
for the name.
As Clément put it:
"As argued on the virtual machine mailing list, we are talking
about a write-barrier more than immutability itself."
I would hence propose to name those objects
locked objects
with the accompanying Someone-tries-to-write-that-Error named
ObjectIsLockedError
and the state-change messages
Object>>lock
Object>>unlock
and likewise the VM-information
SmalltalkImage>>supportsLockedObjects
I know, re-iterating this is tedious, but it will avoid unmet
expectations by newcomers from other languages as well as
name clashes with actual immutability implementations (how should
we name those, then)?
With apologies
-Tobias
[1]:
http://typeocaml.com/2015/01/02/immutable/[2]: a)
http://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/pairs.html "Pairs are not mutable"
b)
http://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/strings.html[3]:
https://wiki.haskell.org/A_brief_introduction_to_Haskell#Immutable_declarations[4]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutable_objectOn 03.03.2016, at 03:19,
[hidden email] wrote:
> Eliot Miranda uploaded a new version of System to project The Trunk:
>
http://source.squeak.org/trunk/System-eem.803.mcz>
> ==================== Summary ====================
>
> Name: System-eem.803
> Author: eem
> Time: 2 March 2016, 7:18:21.713694 pm
> UUID: 934ce776-0717-469b-8818-300954393791
> Ancestors: System-bf.802
>
> Add getters that answer whether the VM supports immutability or multiple bytecode sets.
>
> =============== Diff against System-bf.802 ===============
>
> Item was added:
> + ----- Method: SmalltalkImage>>supportsImmutability (in category 'system attributes') -----
> + supportsImmutability
> + "Answer whether the VM observes the per-object immutability flag and consequently
> + aborts writes to inst vars of, and fails primitives that attempt to write, to immutable objects."
> + "SmalltalkImage current supportsImmutability"
> +
> + ^(self vmParameterAt: 65)
> + ifNil: [false]
> + ifNotNil:
> + [:param| "In older VMs this is a boolean reflecting MULTIPLE_BYTECODE_SETS"
> + param isInteger "In newer VMs it is a set of integer flags, bit 1 of which is IMMUTABILITY"
> + ifTrue: [param anyMask: 2]
> + ifFalse: [false]]!
>
> Item was added:
> + ----- Method: SmalltalkImage>>supportsMultipleBytecodeSets (in category 'system attributes') -----
> + supportsMultipleBytecodeSets
> + "Answer whether the VM supports multiple bytecodeSets."
> + "SmalltalkImage current supportsMultipleBytecodeSets"
> +
> + ^(self vmParameterAt: 65)
> + ifNil: [false]
> + ifNotNil:
> + [:param| "In older VMs this is a boolean reflecting MULTIPLE_BYTECODE_SETS"
> + param isInteger "In newer VMs it is a set of integer flags, bit 0 of which is MULTIPLE_BYTECODE_SETS"
> + ifTrue: [param anyMask: 1]
> + ifFalse: [param]]!
>
>
Locked
