Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: The Emperor Strikes Back Message-ID: Date: 27 Feb 91 17:37:00 GMT References: <3351@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> Sender: aro@aber-cs.UUCP Distribution: comp.object Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 31 Nntp-Posting-Host: odin In-reply-to: alms@cambridge.apple.com's message of 22 Feb 91 20:12:10 GMT On 22 Feb 91 20:12:10 GMT, alms@cambridge.apple.com (Andrew L. M. Shalit) said: alms> In object-oriented programming, the meaning of an identifier alms> (message or variable) depends on the receiver (which is part of alms> the run-time program state). As written, this statements is nonsensical. It is also easy to find counterexamples to any of the senseful version that you can derive from it. alms> This is essentially a disciplined form of dynamic binding. It's alms> very different from lexical binding, in which the meaning of an alms> identifier can be derived purely from the surrounding program alms> text. Think again. Do you *really* think that scoping has got anything to do with overloading? Do you *really* think that how you match a function and a type has got anything to do with how a variable is bound to a value? I think that if this is how OO programming is perceived at large, a big problem exists. Guthery confuses object instances with object types, Cook thinks that dynamic overloading is the basic idea of OO and not its decomposition paradigm, and you confuse overloading with scoping. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk