Messaging vs. subroutines

Joachim Durchholz joachim.durchholz at munich.netsurf.de
Mon May 17 08:16:46 UTC 1999


Dwight Hughes wrote:
> 
> I have attached Alan Kay's note to the Squeak list on meaages and
> messaging below. Notice that Alan considers messaging to be far more
> fundamental and important to Smalltalk than objects. My personal view
> is that one can conceptually derive object oriented programming (and
> all its related details) from the general concept of messaging -- that
> a message can then be mapped to a machine level subroutine once
> everything has been resolved is merely an implementation detail
> relevant to current "normal" computer architectures, not a fundamental
> relation.

Well, my idea of OO starts with polymorphism. Late binding aka dynamic
binding aka virtual method dispatch aka current Smalltalk-80 message
send is the tool that implements that, so my position isn't that far
from the Smalltalk one.

I don't see the reasoning behind Alan's claims. Is there a place where
he goes into more detail on *why* he thinks that messaging is central?

Regards,
Joachim
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