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From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: The Oo challenge
Message-ID: <3527@midway.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Oct 89 15:05:42 GMT
References: <8500@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <7840@charlie.OZ>
Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie, Unthank
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rad@aragorn.UUCP (Robert Alan Dew) wrote:
> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes:

>> In the past, we have seen programming-language designers clamor all
>> over themselves to grab up and subvert the meanings of all the abstract
>> nouns -- "type", "sort", "module", "class", and now "object" are just a few
>> of the generic words which have been seized and concreted. (I now
>> use the word "kind" extensively when talking about programs. No doubt
>> it will be the next to go.)

> I think "kind" has already gone. The Smalltalk blue book mentions
> four kinds of classes.

And it has been given a semi-technically-precise meaning by Cardelli for
his QUEST language, where it's a collection of types.  (QUEST is rather
like the Martin-Lof universe hierarchy, but stopping at level 3).  I think
QUEST was described at the 1988 Extending Database Technology conference
(EDBT 88, in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science series).

This problem, incidentally, is as old as Plato.  It is interesting to
compare the diagrams in Cardelli's paper with those in Wilfred Sellars'
"The Soul as Craftsman", an article from the early Fifties about Plato's
metaphysics (reprinted in one of his collections; "Philosophical Studies",
I think).  Cardelli's diagrams were all anticipated by Sellars - not
surprising since the content they illustrate was too.  One of the better
examples of computer science generating ideas by parodying philosophical
thinking.
-- 
Jack Campin  *  Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND.    041 339 8855 x6045 wk  041 556 1878 ho
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