From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public From: Mark Smith Subject: Key Abstraction that is coming Date: 1997/01/06 Message-ID: <32D03F72.744B@ssd.neca.nec.com.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 207937252 references: <5a9r1k$e74@news4.digex.net> <32C88BE0.7F2B@acm.org> <32CD3495.14FE@pc-plus.de> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: NEC Australia mime-version: 1.0 reply-to: mark@ssd.neca.nec.com.au newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.object,comp.software-eng x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (Win95; I) Date: 1997-01-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Here's my key abstraction for the year Stephen Riehm wrote: > > The Unix view of the world is not a bad one, but one which compiler > writer's seem to have discarded. Unix works because programs are > expected to communicate with each other, via well defined interfaces, > the principle being that the sum of many parts is much greater than > could ever be achieved by one whole. Robert's dream could be achieved The key abstraction here is a well defined interface to make apps talk. ie like DDE, COM, CORBA, pipes and stdin/out etc. These are all fine except they assume that everybody understands the format to start with. Also they have varying levels of impact on your system. pipes/stdin/out are extremely low cost to implement. CORBA - expensive. DDE/COM non scalable. Anyone seen KQML? We need to start putting AI type reasoning into our systems so that they can reason about how to communicate with other apps. making everything talk together is the key thing we all need to work toward, and reasoning about interfaces seems to be a good way of looking at the problem. Alternatively components, and Smalltalk PARTs? but that's interaction at a different level. What do you all think?