Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
You are confusing the fact that the language is specified with the fact
that the runtime is also specified.
I don't believe so. When the language itself is a very thin layer on top
of a large pile of classes, and when there's virtually nothing defined
at the language layer except invoking a method and assigning an object
to a variable, this distinction becomes moot. LISP and FORTH and Tcl
have these sorts of features as well. The definition of the FORTH
language without considering the libraries can be implemented in about 5
to 10 assembly-language instructions. Smalltalk-the-language cannot be
usefully specified without specifying Smalltalk-the-runtime, just as
FORTH cannot be usefully specified without defining what : does.
You can have a runtime in which everything is an "object" and still not
be able to introspect.
I suppose for some definition of "object" that might be true. So you're
arguing it's not really Smalltalk's object-orientedness, but the fact
that Smalltalk's object-orientedness lets you send messages to objects?
You can have lots of introspection ina runtime
without everything being an "object".
This is true. But it certainly doesn't hurt that the mechanisms of
introspection are not special cases, but rather simply a natural result
of how the system is designed.
The fact that the runtime is introspective is what you are extolling,
not the fact that it has objects.
I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm pointing out that the reason it's
easy to confuse is because every part of the system is equally
accessible. The object code, the source code, the compiler, the runtime
stack, the environment you're running in, are all made available to the
program as objects, and that is what *makes* the system easy to introspect.
Contrast with (say) C++ or Java, where either nothing or very little
(respectively) is made available as objects, and hence has no or little
introspective capability.
I'm just not sure how you could (for example) represent your code-base
and class heirarchy as normal objects and *not* be able to introspect it.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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