Comment by gruseom
16 years ago
That's a pretty good explanation; if it's accurate, I wonder why no one else explains it that way.
In Smalltalk, I thought arguments are always evaluated unless they're blocks. Is that wrong? Or is it that, at a lower level, everything's a block, and functions are implemented on top of that as something that always evaluates args?
No, you're right—arguments are always evaluated unless they're blocks in the full Smalltalk design we have today. However, like I said, this is a codified design pattern—the language could get away without doing it while still retaining the "core Smalltalk conceit" of everything being a message sent to an object. This is basically what the io language does—it's basically a Smalltalk at its core, but with less cruft.