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From: johnson@uiucdcsp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: declarations vs smalltalk
Message-ID: <80500008@uiucdcsp>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 14:33:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsp.80500008
Posted: Mon Jul  6 14:33:00 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jul-87 06:35:52 EDT
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Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Jul  6 13:33:00 1987


Suzuki's type inference system works only with a subset of Smalltalk.
In particular, it does not work with parameterized classes such as
Collections.

Cardelli and Wegner's paper is must reading for anybody doing research
in type systems or in object-oriented programming.  Unfortunately, it
is not as applicable to Smalltalk as one might think, since ad-hoc 
polymorphism is important in Smalltalk, in my opinion more important
than inclusion polymorphism.  (Actually, I might have gotten that
last kind of polymorphism wrong---it's the kind that Cardelli and Wegner
spend most of their time on.)  However, I learned a lot from reading
their paper and it has greatly influenced my work.