> they did not start out as a "function" mechanism, they started out as just a delayed evaluation mechanism
I still don't see where you are getting this from. The scans you provide [1] don't make this claim. For instance, look at page 17 of Technical Characteristics of Smalltalk-76 [2]:
> heights _ students transform each to each height
The document seems to have some OCR problems - I'm pretty sure that underscore is meant to be a left arrow, or := in more modern Smalltalks. I understand this to be the equivalent of Smalltalk-80's
> heights := students collect: [:each | each height].
which is clearly a mechanism for mapping a function over a collection, not just a delayed evaluation mechanism.
[1] You might add to your article a footnote specifying that the citations from Bits of History, Words of Advice are from pages 14-15
I still don't see where you are getting this from. The scans you provide [1] don't make this claim. For instance, look at page 17 of Technical Characteristics of Smalltalk-76 [2]:
> heights _ students transform each to each height
The document seems to have some OCR problems - I'm pretty sure that underscore is meant to be a left arrow, or := in more modern Smalltalks. I understand this to be the equivalent of Smalltalk-80's
> heights := students collect: [:each | each height].
which is clearly a mechanism for mapping a function over a collection, not just a delayed evaluation mechanism.
[1] You might add to your article a footnote specifying that the citations from Bits of History, Words of Advice are from pages 14-15
[2] http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Filene/Smalltalk-76/.sy...