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From: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: OOF
Message-ID: <1688.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 7 Sep 90 04:23:51 GMT
References: <9009061817.AA23759@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
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In <9009061817.AA23759@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes:

> How do we know that what we invent will be more "right" than one that
> someone else has already invented, implemented, debugged, and which
> has already passed the "real world usefulness test"?

Well, if you are going to accept any old thing as OOF then "how indeed"?
My objection to the existing OOFs wasn't on the basis of implementation
but on interface.  Are they really the most convenient form of OOF?
I think most of them are for simple problems.  But toy problems aren't
the domain I'm looking to have an OOF for.  I have yet to be convinced, but
am willing to be, that there is an existing OOF that doesn't have those
problems/restrictions.

> Charles Duff and Phil Burk and Jim Callahan and Steve Lewis are not all
> idiots, so their work should not be rejected out-of-hand as being "wrong".

No, I never claimed that the authors were idiots.  I claim(ed) that their
goals are not clean OOF systems.  Anyone with information, references to
FD (Vol and Issue), JFAR, FORML, Books, etc. please step forward.  I *do*
think a good survey of existing mechanisms is worthwhile.

> There seems to be considerable disagreement on ForthNet about what is "right"
> and what is "wrong".  My suspicion is that everybody who has an opinion is
> of the opinion that anything "not invented here" is "wrong".

Well, I have never seen much consensus for any definition of OOP, let alone
a Forth one, so if what you say is true it wouldn't be too surprising.
In fact, I recall there are several object-active systems, one posted
here, Pountains, Mike Patel's TILE (not fully revealed to us), etc.
More consensus than you imply.  I don't want to get into a moral judgement
about right vs. wrong (although I may have failed to avoid it).  I would
rather set up criteria for what a good OOF would be and then evaluate
existing implementations against that criteria.

> The smart businessperson carefully considers both sides of the "make or
> buy" decision, rather than jumping immediately to the "make" decision.

Things have gotten muddied, but my original goal was to show that the
existing (buy) option had flaws.  I have yet to provide my own "make"
decision and would rather try to define a way to evaluate existing
and proposed systems for suitability, so that a fair consideration
can be made.  I hope at least to have planted some doubt in the minds
of those who would otherwise jump immediately to the "buy" decision that
it does have problems.  I admit that I have probably not been very
clear in expressing all of this before and have gotten caught up in the
heat of the moment.

> Finally, I claim from personal experience that it is *extremely* difficult
> to achieve a critical mass of market acceptance.  Starting with a ball
> that is already rolling increases the chances of success immeasurably.

Considering that there are serious questions about whether or not Forth
itself has achieved critical mass, I'm not sure that I'm too worried about
that aspect.  Forth does seem to attract "my way or not at all" people,
myself included.  Hopefully there hasn't been so much OOF code written
that we'll be quick-sank by existing practice.

-Doug

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