On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 12:17:12AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 04:57:01PM -0700, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
In addition, most of what the Smalltalk guys rave about is not the fact
that it is object-oriented. What they generally rave about is the fact
that the system is introspective without limit.
OK, I'll risk appearing ignant and say I don't know what "introspection"
means. What is it?
The simple answer is that is when a language allows you to look at the type
of an object at runtime.
Practically, this means that the underlying implementation of the
type-system must be exposed somewhat to the programmer. There must be
types (classes) themselves that describe the types of types. You can ask
for the type of an object, and you get an object back that describes the
type itself.
It has some uses, especially for making dynamic systems. The
implementation also has some real fun recursion that is challenging to
break. (The object describing the type of the class that describes the
types of classes usually being the hardest object to make. Most systems
end up "bootstrapping" parts of the system, constructing the objects by
hand).
Dave
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