How do you define "object-oriented"?
Kevin Fisher
kgf at golden.net
Fri Apr 26 22:54:16 UTC 2002
Thanks, Alan!
What started for me today as a simple definition has blossomed into
something much deeper that I need to ponder. This is quite fascinating!
On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 02:28:33PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> Well, the meanings of terms change over time, and as my old friend
> Rich Gold likes to say, terms are also "colonized" for political and
> fad reasons. Personally, I started to regret having coined this
> phrase almost immediately, in part because "object-oriented" seemed
> too static. Simula-I used the term "process" to cover both what we
> mean by "object" and "instance" (since classes were not themselves
> objects). But this use of "process" was a little different from the
> already in use definition in the US.
>
> To me, in the beginning, what seemed most important were the
> encapsulation, only message passing (which allows the algebraic
> properties of polymorphism), everything made from the basic building
> block, etc. Doing this right allows some of the other useful
> abstraction mechanisms to be built. But the abstraction ideas have
> always been a problem, in that nothing as "clearly sweet" as objects
> has yet emerged. This has led to quite a profusion of half good ideas
> about classes or prototypes, inheritance or not or multiple or
> single, etc.
>
> Finally, my original biology inspired ideas were completely
> intertwined with late-binding (where I had LISP as a beautiful model
> of how to generally go about things).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> P.S. Real pioneers have the arrows in their chests!
>
> -------
>
>
>
> At 2:10 PM -0400 4/26/02, Kevin Fisher wrote:
> >I have a bit of a question...I'm just sitting down to learn Python right
> >now and I'm finding it a bit too C/C++ like for my liking. What strikes
> >me about Python is it's claim of "object orientation"--and yet, it has
> >atomic types like 'int' and 'char' that are not objects (shades of
> >C++ and Java).
> >
> >I've read the quote on smalltalk.org from Alan that (roughly paraphrased)
> >says "I invented the term object-oriented, and C++ was not what I had in
> >mind."
> >
> >Is it safe to say that something like Python is not truly object-oriented?
> >Or rather--if it's not objective right down to the smallest particle,
> >can it be called object-oriented? I realize this could be a somewhat
> >flameworthy question...but I don't mean it to incite flames.
> >
> >
> >(and then there's the other question about why all new languages go out of
> >their way to be so C-like...a personal beef of mine. :)
>
>
> --
>
More information about the Squeak-dev
mailing list
|