Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!microsoft!jimad From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (JAMES ADCOCK) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Have *YOU* ever written a program which COULDN'T be proven correct? Message-ID: <8@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 13 Feb 90 00:06:36 GMT References: <7598@hubcap.clemson.edu> <9630012@hpirs.HP.COM> <17080@duke.cs.duke.edu> <789@arc.UUCP> <17143@duke.cs.duke.edu> <793@arc.UUCP> <17229@duke.cs.duke.edu> <4157@stpstn.UUCP> Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (JAMES ADCOCK) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 32 In article <4157@stpstn.UUCP> cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes: ... >I go into all this in more detail in an article scheduled for the November >1990 issue of IEEE Software Magazine; "Software Technologies of the 1990's; >a coffee-table issue meant to have a shelf-life of a decade. My >contribution is titled "Planning the Software Industrial Revolution; The >Impact of Object-oriented Technologies". > >It is about putting diverse points of view, and diverse technologies >together. It is a plea for the software community to stop viewing >specific technologies, ala' Ada, C++, or Smalltalk, as panaceas but >as mere tools. It is a plea to stop focusing which weapon is 'better' >and to begin planning how to put all available weapons together to win >the *WAR*; the Software Industrial Revolution. Designers of Object Oriented Languages and/or compilers for the beasts can help in this by addressing methods to make OOPLs interoperable. Once upon a time Basic couldn't call C couldn't call Pascal couldn't call FORTRAN. Now we have widely available compilers allowing this kind of interoperability. Then came OOP, and no languages can inter-call[message] again. Mind you, many OOPLs support calling C or other non-OOP languages-- but allow little or no support for calling *from* C or other non-OOP language. And the various OOPLs don't consider how to message between each other. Thus each OOPL attempts to lock out the others. Give us ways to [almost]seamlessly message between OOPLs, give us ways to fire up the various OOPL run-time support systems from a different language, and give us run-time support systems that can co-exist with each other. Then people can mix and match languages and software modules as best meet their needs.