Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!occrsh!uokmax!apple!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dsl.pitt.edu!pitt!willett!dwp From: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: ... and zen there were objects. Message-ID: <1681.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> Date: 7 Sep 90 01:04:45 GMT References: Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips. (in Pgh, PA) Lines: 36 In , peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > It's simple: > > Ask yourself: "What does an object return?" > > Since that's what's going to be frequently on the stack, it should be > obvious that: > > arg arg arg that-thing the-other-thing > > is the way to go. Guess what... objects rarely return messages. They > usually return other objects. > > Think about it. That has been my point all along. That is what makes cascading possible. If objects are "active" in the sense of being named words then how does code that returns an object cause it to become active? My whole point (and I'm not sure what you are saying is in total disagreement) has been that the following are all separate and distinct operations: pushing message arguments and messages selecting the object which is to recieve the message sending the message Having active message names muddles all three of those steps. Having active objects muddles the last two and contorts cascading and other anonymous object handling (like lists of objects). -Doug -Doug --- Preferred: ( dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us OR ...!{sei,pitt}!willett!dwp ) Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [last resort: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]