A Lexical Mistake

After reading Torsten’s nugget of truth in Planet Smalltalk recently I couldn’t help but be reminded of a Smalltalk based language I’ve been throwing around lately. Not because my language is interesting yet—I don’t even have a prototype concrete syntax—I’m actually referring to my immediate reaction when he wrote:

“Smalltalk is not a language — it’s a dynamic object system with the language built in… [sic]

This is, in my opinion, more cautious than it needed to be. Smalltalk really is just a dynamic object system, but beyond that, I would argue that the language is really just a collection of DSLs.

The first, method definitions is kind of the core DSL of Smalltalk. While not necessarily as small as a simple DSL it provides all of the behavioral elements that make Smalltalk code actually do stuff, all of which can be replicated by generating AST objects, programatically.

More obvious however, is the class definition syntax. This quasi-message-send actually causes so many hacks and side effects that suggesting that it resembles any kind of message programmers would be comfortable sending normally is just outrageous! Really it describes the structure of a class and allows us to manage that structure. Oh, we can also file-out that sucker, too!

(The OMeta parser generator can also be used to write methods. The tool support was iffy last time I looked at it though.)

My point is, Smalltalk is really just a collection of DSLs that allow us to effectively program with a pure object system, and it’s this phenomenon that I believe will allow us to dramatically improve both the appeal of the language as well as its usefulness in the future.

— Lorenz