Re: [RFD] Unified Methods

[Tom Wrensch <Thomas.Wrensch@...>]

> > There is also another aspect about compatibility: learning Lua. For 
> > instance, I am halfway in writing a book about Lua programming, and every 
> > change in the language makes my book obsolete!
> > .... 
> 
> These are both good points, although I'm not sure that books will remain
> for much longer a major source of information on programming languages,
> and electronic editions are much easier to keep up to date. Besides, one
> of the nice things about Lua is precisely that (if you're already a
> programmer) you can learn it quite happily from the manual.
> .....

I agree that sometimes it is better to use a book or at least a printed
manual to learn a language. Certainly enough people feel that way that
programming language books will not go out of date too soon (I hope, I
have a Squeak book comming out late next year). 

More importantly Lua would make an excellent basis for a book about
programming languages in general, or about programming techniques, or half
a dozen other related subjects. Lua loses much of its usefulness for those
purposes if it changes too much over time.

Having said that I must say that this proposal should at least be looked
at. The tag mechanism is incredibly important and useful, but also very
difficult to understand. I believe it is the ONLY feature of the language
that is difficult to learn (with the possible exception of the grep
patterns if you're not used to them). I also believe it is far to late in
the 4.0 release process to consider including it now. And I certainly
don't want to delay the release of 4.0, it's too useful!

Given that, if there are any small changes that could be made in 4.0 that
would ease the introduction of a system like this at some later point,
that would be a good thing. I'm specifically thinking of the detailed
semantics of the GC, though the C API seems like another place to look.

Finally...when's your book coming out? What publisher? Do us poor
language-handicapped folks in the States have a chance of being able to
read it?

  - Tom Wrensch