# Rifling Through Smalltalk's Drawers **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [August 25, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377 "2006-08-25T01:03:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/1 "2006-08-25T01:03:29Z")
Dear Rubytalkers, I wrote a small bit of code called MethodShopping a little while back which as it turned out had just been done in Ruby a few days earlier! More importantly however is that both the name, MethodFinder, and the inspiration for that other Ruby version, was Smalltalk. Smalltalk had a version who knows how many decades ago?.. My inspiration wasn’t Smalltalk, but laziness. I didn’t want to have to go pouring over a class’ interface in a tedious search for a method. I just wanted to be able to throw the result at a class and have it spit out the right method. Still, I thought, hmm, somethin’ to this Smalltalk stuff. (A slight overstatement, at least given my understanding that much of Ruby’s object system, classes and methods are already derived from Smalltalk.) Then I noticed that Rick DeNatale (or is it De Natale?), an old (Your term Rick!) Smalltalker has recently starting blogging, and about Ruby. I’m really stoked that we’re getting old Smalltalkers participating. There’s a ton of fantastic experience there. What other gems like MethodFinder am I busily reinventing? I’d like to know! Well, right now I’d like to know what Smalltalkers think of the discussion about collections. What of your experience helps inform the class structure for Array, Hash, etcetera? With all those extra years, there’s sure to be a few new (to Ruby) wrinkles. Similarly, there’s Lisp. Way older than Smalltalk again. What has Lisp to contribute? Well, I read the other day about Rails’ new method alias\_method\_chain at [Ruby on Rails — New in Rails: Module#alias\_method\_chain](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2006/4/26/new-in-rails-module-alias_method_chain). And according to Jon Tirsen, who commented therein, alias\_method\_chain is apparently very much like a Lispy technique which is known as ‘around advice’ although I’m not sure how it gets that name and haven’t encountered it myself. Having written a bit of Lisp in my time and having declared it my fave language, and now loving the Lispiness of my new fave language, Ruby, I was wondering what could be got from it’s drawers too… Although we don’t seem to be getting so much from Lispers, but perhaps they’re more curmudgeonly old bastards than I am? Any heavy-duty old Lispers out there? So, anyone up for some rifling? By that I mean a vaguely organised and much more proactive and unprincipled band of raiders go thieving through every nook and cranny of Smalltalk’s (or Lisp’s) libraries; or any other room of their houses… Sincerely, thoran “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” — Pablo Picasso ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 2:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/2 "2006-08-25T02:23:35Z")
If you’re trying to win us over to the idea with your message title, I’m sad to say it’s having the opposite effect, for me at least. My MUA didn’t even show me the subject because there was so much noise in front of it. I’ve been on Ruby T. for years and that’s easily the ugliest subject to date. ☹ James Edward G. II ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 3:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/3 "2006-08-25T03:53:42Z")
On 8/24/06, James Edward G. II [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > If you’re trying to win us over to the idea with your message title, > I’m sad to say it’s having the opposite effect, for me at least. My > MUA didn’t even show me the subject because there was so much noise > in front of it. I’ve been on Ruby T. for years and that’s easily > the ugliest subject to date. ☹ I agree completely, the idea was interesting but almost overpowered by the UGLY subject line. ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 10:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/4 "2006-08-25T10:20:18Z")
On Aug 24, 2006, at 6:51 PM, pat eyler wrote: > On 8/24/06, James Edward G. II [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > If you’re trying to win us over to the idea with your message title, > > I’m sad to say it’s having the opposite effect, for me at least. My > > MUA didn’t even show me the subject because there was so much noise > > in front of it. I’ve been on Ruby T. for years and that’s easily > > the ugliest subject to date. ☹ > > I agree completely, the idea was interesting but almost overpowered by > the UGLY subject line. thirded… partially to agree, and partially to demonstrate that nothing you do is going to improve the signal:noise ratio here. – ryan – who gave up arguing that we should split/improve this list in Oct 2002. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/5 "2006-08-25T17:21:14Z")
Bad subject line aside, I still feel it’s a worthy discussion that I’d love to hear folks input on. Jake ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/6 "2006-08-25T17:25:15Z")
On 8/25/06, Jake C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Bad subject line aside, I still feel it’s a worthy discussion that I’d love > to hear folks input on. I agree. Could we please trim the subject to something reasonable? ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/7 "2006-08-25T17:49:18Z")
On 8/25/06, James Edward G. II [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > YUP Very good point Edward! Do not kill the baby before it is born. What about [IDEA] instead of the whole bunch? Just my microassets. Robert – Deux choses sont infinies : l’univers et la bêtise humaine ; en ce qui concerne l’univers, je n’en ai pas acquis la certitude absolue. - Albert Einstein ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 4:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rifling-through-smalltalks-drawers/66377/8 "2006-08-25T16:23:01Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes: > Similarly, there’s Lisp. Way older than Smalltalk again. What has > Lisp to contribute? Well, I read the other day about Rails’ new > method alias\_method\_chain at > [Ruby on Rails — New in Rails: Module#alias\_method\_chain](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2006/4/26/new-in-rails-module-alias_method_chain). And > according to Jon Tirsen, who commented therein, alias\_method\_chain is > apparently very much like a Lispy technique which is known as ‘around > advice’ although I’m not sure how it gets that name and haven’t > encountered it myself. It’s called “around advice” because the function to define it is called DEFADVICE with an “around” parameter (as opposed to “before” or “after”).