Mark S. Miller wrote:
> The one use-case I can see for names and namespaces that isn't
> addressed adequately by existing patterns is expanding the
> property-name-space, to avoid accidental collisions on extensions to
> common abstractions. I note that Smalltalk has long faced this issue,
> and I know of at least three independent proposals for first-class
> selector names that were intended to address it. At least one of these
> were actually implemented. None were ever adopted by a significant
> user community. The problem with all of these is that, by introducing
> another layer of translation between the identifier the programmer
> wrote and the thing that's looked up, you have to introduce and
> explain all the mechanism for determining which translation to use in
> what context. (The T variant of Scheme is the only example I know
> where first-class selectors saw significant use. Though widely
> admired, no other Scheme or Lisp variants picked up on this feature.)
Really? Lisp is a great example of the benefit of namespaces. Namespaces are
essential to Common Lisp. In my Netscape days I wrote the semantic engine for
the reference implementation of ES4 in Common Lisp. Lisp namespaces were
crucial to maintaining my sanity while structuring that program.
Waldemar
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