Object: Identity vs. Environment

Joel Shellman joel at ikestrel.com
Wed May 28 05:36:15 UTC 2003


Forgive me if the vs. is too presumptious but it seems that they are
mutually exclusive paradigms (feel free to argue that they aren't, but
that's my starting point), and it seems that given Andreas post and what I'm
seeing in Object, Identity vs. Environment kind of describes.

Also, my blatant general statements are not arrogance, they are clear
targets all the better to take shots at.

Here's a couple things I've read that seem pertinent:

From:
http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/byte_aug81/design_principles_behind_smalltalk.html

"Modularity: No component in a complex system should depend on the internal
details of any other component. "

In this case, my take on it is: global methods don't scale and result in
interdependencies (or at least make it so likely that it's inevitable).

In the croquet doc:
http://glab.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~croquet/downloads/Croquet0.1.pdf

"This means that a user only has to think of one syntax-semantic
relationship.
*Receiver message* means *the meaning is in the receiver*" (*'s around
italics)

In the example of #isFoo, following the above guideline would certainly
preclude #isFoo being placed on Object. It has to be on a receiver that can
hold the meaning.

Oops, already getting responses to other posts, so I'll put this out there
and let conversation lead the way.

-joel



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