Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!tut!tukki!sakkinen
From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: Evaluating "Object-Oriented" Programming Languages
Keywords: object-oriented, programming languages, evaluation, bibliography
Message-ID: <2626@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 4 Jan 90 09:10:29 GMT
References: <638@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> <10132@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 44

In article <10132@microsoft.UUCP> jimad@microsoft.UUCP (JAMES ADCOCK) writes:
>While the previous suggestions regarding evaluating OO Languages I found
>generally good, here is a list of things I think us grunts down in the
>trenches would pragmatically like to know about a language before spending
>too much time on it:
>
>-> Message dispatch times [...]
>
>-> Dynamic object creation time for a typical small object. [...]

Good.

>-> Specify "hello world" minimum stand-alone run-time executable size,
>   where that size would be the total number of bytes that must be transported
>   to a system that never saw anything in this language before.  Compare
>   to a minimal C or Pascal "hello world" executable on that system 
>   for comparison.

Since a "hello world" program has no importance, neither has its size.
OOP is mostly there to help the building of large and complicated programs.
A fully-fledged OO language typically needs a rather large run-time
system, independently of the size of the "main program".
I think that the condition, "a system that never saw anything
in this language before", is especially pointless.

>-> Include at least some simple common timing and size comparisons that
>   people have experience with -- such as an "Object-Oriented" version
>   of Ackerman's function. [..]

This looks to me as another highly irrelevant criterion.
Ackerman's function is simply not the kind of thing that abounds
in ordinary applications. I suspect it would be unfavourable to
most OO languages, too.

Because the above four were the only performance-related aspects
mentioned, I wanted to criticise the choice. The rest of questions
in the original posting were good and to the point, I think.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland