Hi Alexandre,
On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 8:21 AM, Alexandre Bergel <[email protected]>wrote: > Because what we call a block is actually a closure. Smalltalk-80 invented > blocks, which were not closures at that time. Over the time we found out > that Blocks are not really useful, but instead the humanity largely prefer > closure. > I don't think this is right. Yesterday Clément and I had lunch with Dan Ingalls and we talked about the origin of blocks. At first blocks were not even real objects; instead they were just a syntactic construct for delayed evaluation. Over time the original Smalltalk team found they needed more and more useful features, and they wanted everything to be objects so they introduced both the syntax for blocks and the class BlockContext, but they didn't look at other languages and so they didn't implement blocks as closures. So I think its more accurate to say Over time Smalltalkers found blocks were /really/ useful. Later on they found out that they could implement blocks as closures, with the result that they were even more useful and much cleaner, leading to a more efficient virtual machine. But ok, this is not a pressing thing. Was just a tough. > If it ain't broke don't fix it. The name BlockClosure isn't incorrect. These are blocks implemented as closures. The name MethodContext /is/ broken. These /aren't/ just MethodContexts any more, they are both BlockContexts and MethodContexts, so collapsing ContextPart and MethodContext together into just Context, and deleting the now unused BlockContext does make sense. [snip] > > Alexandre > -- > _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: > Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu > ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;. > > > > On Apr 17, 2014, at 11:45 AM, Yuriy Tymchuk <[email protected]> wrote: > > > It’s like saying that we have to run Pharo on JVM because everyone is > doing that. In 80s block was invented. Why should we rename it because of > some other languages? > > > > Uko > > > > On 17 Apr 2014, at 16:35, Alexandre Bergel <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> Well… the whole community of programming language call a closure a > closure. Calling a block what is actually a closure may not be a > well-marketed move in my opinion. > >> > >> Alexandre > >> -- > >> _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: > >> Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu > >> ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;. > >> > >> > >> > >> On Apr 17, 2014, at 10:29 AM, Sebastian Sastre < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> > >>> On Apr 17, 2014, at 10:08 AM, Yuriy Tymchuk <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>> > >>>> I would rather rename is to Block, as everyone is calling it a > “block”. > >>> > >>> That might be actually a good idea > >>> > >>> sebastian > >>> > >>> o/ > >>> > >>> PS: thinking in that line there is also ‘Context’ as, conceptually, > what these blocks of code want to do is to keep the evaluation in a > specific context. But to ease know-how transference and type less I’d > rather go with the most popular name, as you suggested: ‘Block' > >>> > >>> > >> > >> > > > > > > > -- best, Eliot
