4 ms·

I don't see any sentence nor expressiveness in that. It's the same structure as most method calls. "Deposit 100 dollars in my account." is a sentence, and that

I don't see any sentence nor expressiveness in that. It's the same structure as most method calls. "Deposit 100 dollars in my account." is a sentence, and that's doable in most languages. It just depends on how high you want to go with it. Functions are ubiquitous and powerful: deposit($(100), in(my_account)) And if we remove brackets like a lot of languages (I prefer not to)... deposit $ 100, in my_account Functions remove the need to tie actions to objects too. We can rely on types/interfaces. deposit($(100), in(the_river)) We could go further, again, depends where you want to stop. Expressiveness isn't really limited by most languages.

layer8 5y ago
Also, reading like a sentence is not expressiveness. Expressiveness in programming languages is about abstractions, like for example macro capabilities. Reading like a sentence is merely about fluent APIs and (sometimes) syntactic sugar.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Best to read the smalltalk as always embedded in an invisible framework that looks like this: hey OBJECT !, I want you to ACTION with ARGUMENTS so ... "hey account!, I want you to make a deposit with $100"
- wk_end 5y ago
  ...which illustrates one of the oddities of Smalltalk's vision of OOP pretty well. I've made deposits into accounts, or maybe I've asked banks to make a deposit into an account on my behalf, but I've never (intuitively) instructed an account to make a deposit into itself.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    level error! account deposit: $100 was the message from the bank teller to the account, not from you :)
    - wk_end 5y ago
      Do bank tellers, conceptually, think of themselves as telling accounts to add $100 to themselves? Or do they think of themselves as adding $100 to an account?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        ... when the bank teller's are software-driven entities, they might :)
        wk_end 5y ago
        Yes, I suppose it's the case that if the bank tellers are written in Smalltalk, the Smalltalk way of doing things make sense.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Yeah, you're supposed to say: bankTeller deposit: (100 dollars) in: myAccount.

layer8 5y ago

Also, reading like a sentence is not expressiveness. Expressiveness in programming languages is about abstractions, like for example macro capabilities. Reading like a sentence is merely about fluent APIs and (sometimes) syntactic sugar.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Best to read the smalltalk as always embedded in an invisible framework that looks like this: hey OBJECT !, I want you to ACTION with ARGUMENTS so ... "hey account!, I want you to make a deposit with $100"

wk_end 5y ago
...which illustrates one of the oddities of Smalltalk's vision of OOP pretty well. I've made deposits into accounts, or maybe I've asked banks to make a deposit into an account on my behalf, but I've never (intuitively) instructed an account to make a deposit into itself.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  level error! account deposit: $100 was the message from the bank teller to the account, not from you :)
  - wk_end 5y ago
    Do bank tellers, conceptually, think of themselves as telling accounts to add $100 to themselves? Or do they think of themselves as adding $100 to an account?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      ... when the bank teller's are software-driven entities, they might :)
      - wk_end 5y ago
        Yes, I suppose it's the case that if the bank tellers are written in Smalltalk, the Smalltalk way of doing things make sense.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Yeah, you're supposed to say: bankTeller deposit: (100 dollars) in: myAccount.