Hey, thanks Dave. A couple of comments:
> In contrast - the OO tradition that began with Simula (not Simula I which > was already moving away from the philosophical ideal) and was embodied in > Self and Smalltalk, did not care about the machine, did not care about > efficiency, it was all about the domain - faithful representation of same - > and about human-machine "natural" communication about that shared domain > (both humans and objects "lived" in the same "world"). > > To some, I suppose lack of efficiency and the ability to implement pure, faithful representations of the physical system being modeled are positive attributes of a language. One the other hand, in practical use simulations are only required to represent the physical system of interest at some level of abstraction which has been identified as sufficient to answer the questions being asked of the system. Therefore, 100% faithfulness of representation of the physical system is not only not needed, it can get in the way of producing results. As to efficiency, what can I say: efficiency is everything to the analyst. Without it even the most beautiful, elegant model won't be used, because results that are produced too late, or which require too much effort to produce are simply of little use. IMO, the most important aspect of developing useful simulations is not the elegance of the language being used, but rather the skills of the model designer in producing a design that is properly abstracted: not too much detail, not too little, which will address the pertinent analysis issues. The "pureness" of the OO language being used really doesn't come to play with any of the actual fielded applications I've been involved with. Cheers, --Doug -- Doug Roberts [email protected] [email protected] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell
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