How do I use class variables in Clamato? - smalltalk

I discovered Clamato the other day and want to play a bit with it. I don't seem to find how one can declare and use class variables in Clamato. The docs only mention instance variables.
Here's the link to http://clamato.net/ if you didn't already know it.
Here's the source: http://bitbucket.org/avibryant/clamato/src

Thank you for discovering Tommy.
Will also give a play.
In regard to "class variables", your link above states that the language has "no metaclass hierarchy", so a guess would be no class variables, but could be wrong.

You might want to take a look at amber, another smalltalk implementation for the web browser. It has a lot more traction, I've seen presentations at the FOSDEM and ESUG conferences

Related

Error when creating objects using TclOO

I have Tcl 8.6 installed on my system. I am just trying some examples from TIP #257: Object Orientation for Tcl :
oo::object create foo
::foo
oo::define foo {method bar {} {puts "Hello, World!"}}
foo does not refer to a class
while evaluating {oo::define foo {method bar {} {puts "Hello, World!"}}}
I thought that I can just create an object without class, or what I'm doing wrong?
Use objdefine instead of define to work on objects.
Note that a class is an object, so when you work on the class itself you still use objdefine.
Some of the examples on the wiki (and one in the documentation for the Tcllib oo::util module) were written while TclOO was still taking shape and are not executable under the current definition of the system. Another problem is that some wiki pages describe clever workarounds for TclOO limitations that have since been eliminated and no longer need any workarounds, so if you're learning TclOO from the wiki you will be confused. If anyone knows a good, up-to-date tutorial, feel free to comment with links.
(I just remembered this book chapter. I haven't studied it in detail, but it did clear a couple of things up for me.)
Documentation: oo::define (also objdefine), oo::util package

Why are so many methods in Windows COM programming in C++ resolved to the global namespace explicitly?

I'm programming Windows COM in C++ and I see that a lot of functions get prefixed with :: so that the global namespace version got called. Why is that?
I understand that there may be conflicts with namespaces, but does it happen so often in COM that everyone has become so paranoid that every single function now has to be resolved explicitly?
Here are some examples that I see often:
wStrLen = ::SysAllocStringLen(NULL, wStr);
::SysFreeString(str);
::CoTaskMemFree(item);
And many others.
It just puzzles me why the programmers chose to resolve namespace explicitly and why they didn't just write:
wStrLen = SysAllocStringLen(NULL, wStr);
SysFreeString(str);
CoTaskMemFree(item);
Any ideas?
No, that's not common in COM programming, not in any I wrote or studied anyway. COM itself adds few names to the global namespace, there are not that many helper functions. A common way to implement a COM interface is to use a C++ class, you can stick it in any namespace you like since it doesn't get exposed at all outside of the module. I suspect that it is just something the team whose code you saw preferred. If you saw it in a book then that's a good way to increase the odds that the book code sample can drop into an existing program without too much trouble. There's otherwise nothing wrong with it.

where to find whatIsAPrimitive in squeak

Hey, friends, I am using squeak for developing and I found primitives is useful, every comment belong to primitives all mentioned
See Object documentation whatIsAPrimitive
Any friend can help where to see the object document whatIsAPrimitive, thanks first!
You find this documentation as follows: open a class browser, search for the class Object, go to the class side, and look for the method whatIsAPrimitive.
Alternatively, you can select the word whatIsAPrimitive and hit Ctrl-m (or Apple-m on Mac) to search for a method with that name.

Is it good practice to call module functions directly in VB.NET?

I have a Util module in my VB.NET program that has project-wide methods such as logging and property parsing. The general practice where I work seems to be to call these methods directly without prefixing them with Util. When I was new to VB, it took me a while to figure out where these methods/functions were coming from. As I use my own Util methods now, I can't help thinking that it's a lot clearer and more understandable to add Util. before each method call (you know immediately that it's user-defined but not within the current class, and where to find it), and is hardly even longer. What's the general practice when calling procedures/functions of VB modules? Should we prefix them with the module name or not?
Intellisense (and "Goto Definition") should make it trivial to find where things are located, but I always preface the calls with a better namespace, just for clarity of reading. Then it's clear that it's a custom function, and not something built in or local to the class you're working with.
Maybe there's a subtle difference I'm missing, but I tend to use shared classes instead of modules for any code that's common and self-contained - it just seems easier to keep track of for me, and it would also enforce your rule of prefacing it, since you can't just call it from everywhere without giving a namespace to call it from.
I usually put the complete namespace for a shared function, for readibility.
Call MyNameSpace.Utils.MySharedFunction()
Util is such a generic name.
Example from the .Net framework. You have System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(...). Usually you refer to this as HttpUtility.UrlEncode since you have an import statement at the top.
The name of the class which has the static utility methods should be readable and explainable. That is good practice. If you have good class names they might just as well reside in a Utils namespace, but the class name should not be Utils.
Put all your logging in a Logger class. All your string handing in a StringUtils class etc. And try to keep the class names as specific as possible, and I'd rather have more classes with fewer functions than the other way around.

How do you implement C#4's IDynamicObject interface?

To implement "method-missing"-semantics and such in C# 4.0, you have to implement IDynamicObject:
public interface IDynamicObject
{
MetaObject GetMetaObject(Expression parameter);
}
As far as I can figure out IDynamicObject is actually part of the DLR, so it is not new. But I have not been able to find much documentation on it.
There are some very simple example implementations out there (f.x. here and here), but could anyone point me to more complete implementations or some real documentation?
Especially, how exactly are you supposed to handle the "parameter"-parameter?
The short answer is that the MetaObject is what's responsible for actually generating the code that will be run at the call site. The mechanism that it uses for this is LINQ expression trees, which have been enhanced in the DLR. So instead of starting with an object, it starts with an expression that represents the object, and ultimately it's going to need to return an expression tree that describes the action to be taken.
When playing with this, please remember that the version of System.Core in the CTP was taken from a snapshot at the end of August. It doesn't correspond very cleanly to any particular beta of IronPython. A number of changes have been made to the DLR since then.
Also, for compatibility with the CLR v2 System.Core, releases of IronPython starting with either beta 4 or beta 5 now rename everything in that's in the System namespace to be in the Microsoft namespace instead.
If you want an end to end sample including source code, resulting in a dynamic object that stores value for arbitrary properties in a Dictionary then my post "A first look at Duck Typing in C# 4.0" could be right for you. I wrote that post to show how dynamic object can be cast to statically typed interfaces. It has a complete working implementation of a Duck that is a IDynamicObject and may acts like a IQuack.
If you need more information contact me on my blog and I will help you along, as good as I can.
I just blogged about how to do this here:
http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2008/10/dynamic-dispatch-in-c-40.html
Here is what I have figured out so far:
The Dynamic Language Runtime is currently maintained as part of the IronPython project. So that is the best place to go for information.
The easiest way to implement a class supporting IDynamicObject seems to be to derive from Microsoft.Scripting.Actions.Dynamic and override the relevant methods, for instance the Call-method to implement function call semantics. It looks like Microsoft.Scripting.Actions.Dynamic hasn't been included in the CTP, but the one from IronPython 2.0 looks like it will work.
I am still unclear on the exact meaning of the "parameter"-parameter, but it seems to provide context for the binding of the dynamic-object.
This presentation also provides a lot of information about the DLR:
Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in Microsoft .NET by Jim Hugunin.