This is actually an intersting discussion. There are several levels to it. 1. Should Pharo be compatible with a standard from 1998? 2. What is the general view on using exceptions in Pharo? 3. What should allButFirst: do?
Ad 1) I am relatively new to Pharo, If backwards compatibility is important, it should adhere to the standard and the spirit of the standard. If we want a different semantics in some areas, it seems like new methods are needed, with names which is not confused with existing standard. Ad 2) I am so new to Pharo I do not even know how efficient (or expensive) exceptions are in Pharo. In most programming languages they are expensive, and should not be used as an alternative to an if statement. My views on exceptions are very influenced by Bertrand Meyer, which lead me to the view that a) Asking for the all but the first three elements of a two element array is most likely a broken pre-condition. Hence an error. b) As it is the clients responsibility to ensure precondition, we might as well help the client of the collection by offering an other method with a different pre-condition. Ad 3. Should follow from the first two :-) Best, Kasper
