On Fri, 8 Oct 2010 19:51:32 +0200 Waldemar Kornewald <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 5:20 PM, Paul D. Fernhout > <[email protected]> wrote: > > The PataPata project (by me) attempted to bring some ideas for Squeak and > > Self to Python about five years ago. A post mortem critique on it from four > > years ago: > > "PataPata critique: the good, the bad, the ugly" > > http://patapata.sourceforge.net/critique.html > > In that critique you basically say that prototypes *maybe* aren't > better than classes, after all. On the other hand, it seems like most > problems with prototypes weren't related to prototypes per se, but the > (ugly?) implementation in Jython which isn't a real prototype-based > language. So, did you have a fundamental problem with prototypes or > was it more about your particular implementation? I have played with the design (& half-way) of a toy prototyped-based language and ended thinking there is some semantic flaw in this paradigm. Namely, models we need to express in programs constantly hold the notions of "kinds" of similar elements. Which often are held in collections; collections and types play together in my sense. In other words, type is a fondamental modelling concept that should be a core feature of any language. Indeed, there are many ways to realise it concretely. In my sense, the notion of prototype (at least in the sense of self or Io) is too weak and vague. For instance, cloning does not help much in practice: programmers constantly reinvent constructors, or even separated object creation and initialisation. Having such features is conceptually helpful, practically secure, but most importantly brings it as "common wealth" of the programming community (a decisive argument for builtin features, imo). Conversely, class-based language miss the notion, freedom to create, of individual objects. forcing the programmer to create a class for a chess board is simply stupid for me, and worse: semantically wrong. This prevents the program to mirror the model. > Bye, > Waldemar Denis -- -- -- -- -- -- -- vit esse estrany ☣ spir.wikidot.com _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
