HELP! formalizing OO

Florin Mateoc mateoc at orbonline.net
Sat Apr 25 14:40:50 UTC 1998


At 02:13 AM 25/04/98 -0400, Tansel wrote:

.......
>I suspect what you're looking for is something in the lines of
>relational database theory so that by means of something or some
>mechanism similar to "normal forms" so that one can apply the magic of
>formulas to prove a design's correctness; in fact OO was long criticized
>(yawn) that it didn't have something similar to that.
........

Yes, something in those lines,  but it does not have to be able to prove
a complex's systems correctness, or consistency, or completeness. If only
some of its results could instead simply give us hints on how to design
better systems or languages, I think it's worth trying. There is certainly
a lot of room for improvement in the average design quality of current OO
systems.
Furthermore, the empiric approach makes it appropriate for human artists
but not for computers. If we ever plan to make computers think themselves,
they could certainly use a more formalized one.

Thank you for the readings you suggested, I will check them out, although
you don't seem to wholeheartedly recommend them.

Florin





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