Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!dptg!pegasus!psrc From: psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: What is "*the* OO programming language"? Summary: it depends on who you're talking to Message-ID: <4281@pegasus.ATT.COM> Date: 29 Nov 89 06:23:26 GMT References: <190@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <77500016@m.cs.uiuc.edu> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 33 Written 7:52 am Nov 18, 1989 by pcg@emerald.cs.aber.ac.uk: > unfortunately Smalltalk is not what most people know as an OO > language. The likes of Object Pascal, C++, Ada (argh!) are > associated in the public's mind with OO programming. In article <77500016@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, render@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > Are you serious? Everyone I've ever met who claims to know > something about OOPLs (other than recent C++ converts) basically > holds Smalltalk up as the standard against which other OO languages > are measured. I'm not saying this is proper, but it does seem to be > the case. What "public" are you talking about? The last question is the right one to ask. The "recent C++ converts" are a *large* crowd, with lots of money to throw around, and with a certain set of problems to solve. There are other people (OOP theorists, prototypers, students at a certain level, applications developers with certain degrees of freedom in their choice of platforms and release dates) who should pay attention to Smalltalk instead. Certainly Smalltalk gathered more attention after the Byte articles and the publication of "the blue book", and before Stroustrup's book came out. (It changed my C programming style, in ways that made C++ very comfortable.) But object oriented methods have reached a much larger audience since then, and people are going in lots of different directions. (Turbo Pascal 5.5 and Quick Pascal notwithstanding, I think the "object Pascals" have mostly influenced a small percentage of Mac programmers.) Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories att!pegasus!psrc, psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind. Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com