From: emergentcy@aol.com (Emergentcy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: is Smalltalk a safe language ?
Date: 21 Jun 1995 11:42:23 -0400

In article <3s73fa$jjo@maverick.tad.eds.com>, Mark Scriffiny
<mscriffi@pacbell.ddc.cio.eds.com> writes:

>[??? writes]:
>>The other big un-safe problem with Smalltalk is the fact that it does
>>no type checking at development time - so it's easy, and very common,
>>for ST code to blow up with a "method does not understand" message.
>>I'd like to see this fixed with strong type checking.   All arguments
>>to methods should be typed, and all method return values should be
>>typed.  And all variables should be typed.
>>[rest of message deleted]
>
>I doubt that Smalltalk would be as powerful & as flexible as it is now. 

In OO there are no "programs", only objects behaving.

The fundamental point is, of course, not technical at all.  Its kind of
cultural/philosophical/world view-ish.
Rigor, strong-typing, "I can know it all ahead of time",
who's-in-charge-here, blah blah.  There is a hubris that says both means
and outcomes can be determined.  An appeal or desire or drive to create a
faux omnisicience that only has a place in a static and passivated world
whose advances are written in its past and there are no pages left for its
future.

Try having a discussion with a manager who has asked "who owns the
Internet".  Watch him squirm as you point out that no body is in charge. 
No body is at the apex of the pyramid dispensing direction and wisdom. 
That the benefit emerges from individual players pursuing individual goods
and goals.

At the risk of over playing an analogy, I would say that I'm in favor of
capitalistic software instead of communist software.  No 5 year plans for
me, thank you very much.  No unified governance directing the march to a
glorious and golden future that recedes further and further in the
distance (repelled by the stench of its pursuers).

Ah well, sorry to bore you with what SEEMS to be off topic drivel.  Let me
close with a quote from one of the great books:

   10 And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked
of him a king.
   11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign
over you:  He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his
chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
   12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over
fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and
to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
   13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be
cooks, and to be bakers.
   14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your
oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
   15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and
give to his officers and to his servants.
   16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your
goodliest young men, and your asses and put them to his work.
   17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
   18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall
have chosen you: and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
   19  Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and
they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
   20 That we also may be like all the nations; ...

Its interesting (to me) that the arguably single real omnisicient being
didn't have to use omniscience to foretell the future.

Chuck Durrett
Emergentcies Consulting