Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!rpi!uupsi!sunic!fuug!news.funet.fi!tukki.jyu.fi!sakkinen From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: The Emperor Strikes Back Message-ID: <1991Mar11.062302.18142@tukki.jyu.fi> Date: 11 Mar 91 06:23:02 GMT References: <1991Mar8.061042.5578@tukki.jyu.fi> Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland Lines: 55 In article pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi) writes: >On 8 Mar 91 06:10:42 GMT, sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) said: >sakkinen> ... > ... > >Moreover subject oriented ("ad hominem") spelling flames ("How can we >respect *you* if you cannot even spell 'antidisestablishmentarianism' >correctly?") or coding flames are not Object Oriented, and therefore >outside the scope of this newsgroup :-). Actually I agree. But I was enticed to pick nits from your posting because of an earlier passage in it: >johnson> I am a Smalltalk implementor, and know exactly how C++ is >johnson> implemented. Of course scoping and overloading are different >johnson> issues. I stand by my statement that closures are not the way >johnson> Smalltalk is implemented. > >I am sorry to inform you that that is the case. Objects in Smalltalk >*are* closures, and Smalltalk classes are closure generators. I know >about Smalltalk implementation [...] > >johnson> If you look at the output of cfront then you will see that my >johnson> description of C++ is completely accurate. > >I know abpout the output of cfront, and I can tell you that your >impression of it is inaccurate. [...] By the way, it is useful that some people like you try to make established concepts of OOP questionable. That's the way to see what is the real contribution of OOP ("if any", you would add) and what on the opposite is more or less word magic. Specifically: 1. I agree with you that it is unnecessary confusion to speak about "message passing" in Smalltalk and similar languages (I have even said that in a published paper). 2. I have also tried to minimise the role of inheritance and to explain it by other concepts. However, I don't quite agree with your opinion that inheritance is totally superfluous and perhaps harmful (isn't that in essence what you have said?). 3. I don't buy your view of objects being simply values. That is evidently the view of functional programming (perhaps logic programming too), but it simply does not fit all programming paradigms. Markku Sakkinen Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts) PL 35 SF-40351 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again) Finland SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)