From: Doc O'Leary <droleary@...>
Date: 2001-11-27T07:07:07+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26561] Re: Selector Namespaces: A Standard Feature for Smalltalk?

In article <3C019B73.60205@mail.com>, James A. Robertson
<jarober@mail.com> wrote:

> Actually, they do.  Take Smalltalk - I load a component like Distributed 
> Smalltalk into the system.  It overrides the Object>>#printOn: method.
> 
> I now load some other component - someone's custom inspector framework. 
>   It also overrides Object>>printOn:
> 
> I <want> to use both - having selector level namespaces would solve 
> this, while versioning doesn't help me <at all>.

I never said namespaces weren't a solution, I just said they were a
poor, indirect solution to what developers really want.  Namespaces
muck up the code far too much for the benefits they offer.  It doesn't
take much imagination to come up with a system that better suits your
needs at a higher level instead of suffering with the hackery that
namespaces provide.