Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!snorkelwacker!ai-lab!zurich.ai.mit.edu!markf From: markf@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Mark Friedman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: Scheme is unnecessarily biased towards lists Message-ID: Date: 25 Sep 90 16:07:25 GMT References: <9009200822.AA02949@vis.> <541@roo.UUCP> Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Reply-To: markf@zurich.ai.mit.edu Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lines: 38 In-reply-to: mark@parc.xerox.com's message of 25 Sep 90 06:20:04 GMT In article <541@roo.UUCP> mark@parc.xerox.com (Mark Weiser) writes: In article markf@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Mark Friedman) writes: >In article <539@roo.UUCP> mark@parc.xerox.com (Mark Weiser) writes: > And what happens in this case if two (or more) different people > are doing this (in a large project, say), each has their own notion > of my-new-numeric-types, etc. etc. >They have to talk to each other :-) Not funny, and only incompletely true. They not only have to talk to each other, but they have to each change their code when they discover each other. Suppose there are three, or six, of these people. That is a lot of people who all have to talk, and change their code, everytime one of them has a new type to add. It is this sort of thing that a good OO language avoids, and that using an OO style within a non-OO language can't avoid. Scheme loses. My original example was a SIMPLE example of a way to get genericity in Scheme. If you need all the OO goodies you can get them. In Scheme. Their a various OO packages for Scheme out there. If they are not enough for you, you can make them do more or roll your own. In any case, OO is no panacea for the problems of team programming. People still have to talk to each other; only now when they make a mistake they can cry "OOps" :-) -Mark -- Mark Friedman MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab 545 Technology Sq. Cambridge, Ma. 02139 markf@zurich.ai.mit.edu