(Taking things slightly out of order.)
On Jul 13, 2005, at 7:32 PM, Larry Wall wrote:
A class is restricted to having to provide a working interface to real objects.
Can't there be pure-abstract, non-instantiable classes? Or are you still considering those to be interfaces to "real objects"? I suppose, arguably, the class pseudo-object could make that work, but it seems a sleight-of-hand.
In addition to what chromatic said, I'd like to point out that you've got the abstraction levels backwards by my lights: these days I tend to think of the class as a restricted form of role.
Ok, fine, then let's get rid of classes and just use roles. Right now, it sounds like the functionality of one of them is a proper subset of the functionality of the other. If that's the case, why do we need both? Or is there something that one of them can do that the other cannot and that absolutely cannot be rolled into the other one? (I hope that made sense.)
--Dks
