Object orientation - can you have too much of a good thing?

Hans-Martin Mosner hmm at heeg.de
Mon Oct 29 20:23:14 UTC 2007


Igor Stasenko schrieb:
> There is a language which uses multiple-dispatch. See Slate. And it is
> object-oriented.
>   
Yes, I know - Slate is a very interesting approach, and from a
theoretical standpoint, I like it a lot. AFAIK there is no efficient
implementation of the dispatch algorithm yet, and progress is stalled
according to the web site:

/
> /Early 2006/ - The project is on hold after loss of interest from the
> lead implementor. Slate needs a significant qualitative speed boost
> for further updates.
/

This is a sad thing.

> I don't see how given problem (lack of multiple dispatch) could be
> considered as a OO problem, or as an example against using OO
> principles.
>   
I am all for multiple dispatch (in fact, the asymmetry of the receiver
and argument roles in Smalltalk message sends is the one thing that I
dislike a bit about Smalltalk.)

A multiple dispatch based systems would need somewhat different
development tools, but I think they could be as powerful as the
Smalltalk browser/inspector/debugger. There also needs to be a notion
about where a method is at home - in basic Smalltalk, this is always the
receiver class, but in multiple dispatch systems you need some sort of
"packages" in the basic system to organize things. But of course, all
mature Smalltalk systems need such packages as well to support things
like class extensions, so a development environment without some concept
of packages would not be accepted in these days.

Cheers,
Hans-Martin
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