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From: rca@cslab9a.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: What is Objective C?
Message-ID: <49102@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 5 Sep 90 18:15:48 GMT
References: <3864@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <2700002@hpspkla.spk.hp.com> <5524@stpstn.UUCP> <1990Sep4.034131.532@cbnewsl.att.com>
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Reply-To: rca@cslab9a.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 31

In article <1990Sep4.034131.532@cbnewsl.att.com>, psrc@cbnewsl.att.com
(Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes:
|>I will try to post this entire article without giggling.  Let me start
|>out by pointing out that eiffel.uucp and stpstn.uucp are the Usenet
|>systems of two companies which (currently) provide the sole
|>implementations of their founders' respective object-oriented
|>programming languages and/or environments.  In these two cases, if one
|>wants to use the one of the languages and/or environments in question,
|>one will find that *the* (singular) implementation is tied very tightly
|>to the language and/or environment.

What you write is only half correct:
The NeXT computer systems (on 18th Sept there are coming a couple of new
systems, and I guess they already work, so I use the plural) work with
Objective-C.
Although NeXT licensed parts of the language I guess, they reimplemented it on
top of the GNU-C compiler. It is no longer a preprocessor and the runtime 
system is different. Actually the new compiler that is out on Sept 18th will
not only compile Objective-C but also C++ and this in the same source file.
(This may be ugly if you are a purist, but it can be pretty useful if you are
porting applications).
Best of all that, as the GNU license agreement commands, all the changes made
to the compiler will be copylefted and thus available to anyone.
So StepStone's Objective-C is not the only implementation of the language.

Ronald                                                            
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."  Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
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