copy yourself ?
jan ziak
ziakjan at host.sk
Thu May 22 20:34:37 UTC 2003
hi. i would like to ask whether some squeaker has ever seen an object which
is capable of copying itself. for example, i have a glass in front of me -
certainly an object - but i have never seen any glass copying itself in front
of me when i say "copy yourself" to it. in contrary, i have only seen people
or machines capable of copying a glass. the point is that i do not believe
that any object could copy itself. even DNA which is said to have replicating
capabilities does not replicate itself as such, but requires a niche capable
of replicating it. so why, in smalltalk, almost every object can copy itself
when i send a message to it - it seems absurd to me. doesn't it also to you?
a second problem is that the copying process depends on particularities of
situation in which someone or something want's to copy an object. copying is
context dependent. so why has every object in smalltalk only one method for
copying (well it has three types of copy-methods but the point is that the
number and meaning of them fixed).
wouldn't it be more rational to have objects capable of constructing copies
of objects?
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