Re: polymophism

[jhd@herold.franken.de (Joachim Durchholz)]

donh@syd.csa.com.au wrote 25.11.96:

> You may be thinking of clusters (which aren't part of the language). These
> serve only to group classes into subsystems as an administrative convenience
> and have no semantic significance.

Though clusters have been declared not to be part of the language, they  
really are.
After all, it is the *compiler* that declares an error if it can't find a  
class because it has been renamed via cluster configuration.

Or, if you don't believe in a proof by "the compiler complains" (a  
standpoint that I usually share):
Take away the cluster configuration from a set of classes. What's left is  
a set of classes with lots of undefined and ambiguous names, because the  
renamed clusters no longer exist under their expected names.

Besides, I don't feel quite at home with the class = module requirement.  
There are useful libraries that consist of dozens of tiny classes, some  
containing nothing more than a few invariant or constant definitions.   
Such classes have too fine granularity to allow easy understanding of a  
system; you need larger units. I think the Cluster concept fill that gap  
(and quite well, too).

Regards,
-Joachim

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