Re: Interesting but sensitive topic to discuss (HELP: - OOP and CASE tools)

[David N. Smith <dnsmith@watson.ibm.com>]

In article <32891BA4.4AA5@concentric.net> Alan Lovejoy,
alovejoy@concentric.net writes:
>In view of the OO languages such as Self that don't even >have classes,
>one has to question how central class inheritance (as opposed to type inheritance) really
>is to even static modelling (not that getting inheritance right is easy, or that getting
>it wrong is inconsequential).

Alan:

One can think of SELF as a language in which all objects are classes
since any object can serve the function of a prototype for a family of
objects differing only in their 'data'. Inheritence in SELF is not type
inheritence; it is much more purely implementation inheritence than even
Smalltalk.

I do agree that classes are often thought of as necessary an basic in all
OOP languages and the definition of OOP often includes the concept of
class. That's basically wrong. 

Classes are necessary and basic only in those restricted 'OOP' languages
that use type inheritence.

Dave

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David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY
Mailto: dnsmith@watson.ibm.com
Home Page: http://www.dnsmith.com/
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