Re: OO, C++, and something much better!

[feldmand@erols.com (Damon Feldman)]

 Alan Lovejoy <alovejoy@concentric.net> wrote:
>Damon Feldman wrote:
>>  Alan Lovejoy <alovejoy@concentric.net> wrote:
>> >Fergus Henderson wrote:

>> If they had _SmallTalk_ with static typing, would they use it instead of
>> SmallTalk?  Since Java is just such a product, and is the hottest thing out
>> there right now, it could be that people *are* convinced that OO w/ static
>> typing is the way to go.

>Ever heard of StrongTalk?  It's Smalltalk with static typing.  It was a failure
>in the marketplace.

There could be a lot of explanations for this.  Why has SmallTalk floundered 
for some 20 years (if you start w/ ST72 and go up to 4 years ago).  Success in 
the free market doesn't equate to good language design or high productivity 
all the time.  Look at all the C and COBOL out there :-).

>Why would Prudential choose Smalltalk as a replacement for COBOL,

There are many possibilities other than dynamic typing.

>> Also, can't you just send everything flying around the system as an Object
>> (root of the whole class tree) in those situations when you want dynamic
>> typing?
>
>Not in Java.  Java won't let you send any message that the compiler doesn't
>know will be valid.

This strikes me as a more valid point.

But it raises the question of exactly when you would want to send a message 
that might raise an error if you're not careful about the procedural flow that
gives rise to the message send. This task is hard enough in a procedural 
system, and OO should insulate us from all things procedural, anyway (1/2 :-).

Don't you generally *know* that the message will be handled because you know 
that only descendents of a certain class will be the reciever?  In which case 
you can declare the reciever of that type and still enjoy polymorphism without
having the programmer keep track of what flows give rise to what types for 
which objects at what times.

Damon