Re: Philosophy and object systems (was Re: goops/guile doc)

[Lalo Martins <lalo at webcom dot com>]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 09:01:48PM -0800, Craig Brozefsky wrote:
> 
> You might wanna check out:
> 
> http://www.cyberdyne-object-sys.com/oofaq/oo-faq-S-1.19.html#S-1.19

Thanks, I'm reading right now.


> I would argue that they are the better solution, because they can
> implement a message passing style, but are not strictly limited to
> dispatching on one argument.  With a simple macro I can use generic
> functions to implement something that looks and acts just like java
> methods (except it would have consistent runtime semantics and allow
> you to specialize on more than one argument, including "this"). I can
> also implement abstract protocols that are not tied to any class, yet
> still have all of the advantages of full polmorphism.

What are you talking about? C++ can do that. IIRC, ObjC can
too. Actually, ISO C++ functions are _very_ similar to
generics; even for not-class-bound functions, you can overload
based on argument types.

(So yes, C++ in its current form is a combination of
message-passing and generics, and thus is possibly the ``best''
sollution ;-) I know, flame on. I also realize that you can
easily emulate message-passing with generics, as the other guy
kindly pointed out.)

[]s,
                                               |alo
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