The typical pitfall is that syntax isn't portable between Smalltalk
dialects--for anyone that cares.
Pragmas first came into fashion as smalltalk needed efficient modular
loading in runtime images. Pragmas in VA allowed things like globals to
be load-sequenced before code that references them. Pragmas in VA were
class methods with a special prefix. Those methods contained special
syntax in comments that were used at load time to declare things like
shared variables. Some people believed preLoad execution was a flawed
design and thought inventing some new syntax was the best solution. "A
declarative model" was the buzzword behind that movement. The new syntax
was because VA license restrictions (at that time) didn't allow the
compiler to be packaged in a runtime image. The syntax IBM used was very
limited. The VW solution was to use parcels containing shared variable
models derived from declarations in Smalltalk syntax. The VW solution
was far better and it fits well in a vastly superior namespace design.
VW uses pragmas to declare method attributes (method metadata). The only
time I use VW pragmas is for declaring menus. I know VW method pragmas
can be used for some really neat things but I tend to revert to using
portable ways to do the same things.
Paul Baumann
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Stefan Schmiedl
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 6:11 AM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: [vwnc] Pragmas - do's and don't's
Pragmas seem to enable providing functionality in a "pull"-style as
opposed to actively scheduling code blocks for execution by some
initialization mechanism.
Does anybody have experiences to share about using pragmas?
Typical pitfalls? Performance issues? How-to or How-not-to stories?
Thanks,
s.
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