[Cuis] [Philosophy] Do we need pool dictionaries?

[Ken Dickey]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2014 05:38:34 -0800 (PST)
"Sean P. DeNigris" <sean at clipperadams.com> wrote:

> Juan Vuletich-4 wrote
> > I don't like pooldictionaries. They look like "hidden globals" to me, 
> > and they are as bad as regular globals. Maybe there were good reasons 
> > for them 30 years ago, but I don't see any today, except for
> > compatibility.
> 
> I agree that they should be avoided if possible, but they seem useful e.g.
> for NativeBoost in Pharo. There are many C constants, and you'd like to
> refer to them directly so you can copy/paste from documentation, and so that
> you don't have to context switch as much when writing C calls. With shared
> pools, you can import them into the namespace of all classes that directly
> access the library.

I also don't see the need for pools.

A better idea is first class environments [selector + which environment/dictionary to use].  This was used in SmalltalkAgents and PLT Scheme to allow one, e.g. to debug a new debugger using the old one.

A bit of work, but quite handy.

$0.02,
-KenD