Re: Classes vs Tagged Types - Terminology

[bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan)]

In article <1993Mar25.155650.16244@inmet.camb.inmet.com> stt@spock.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft) writes:
   [ much that I agree with except for the following ]
   More important than inheritance (even with type extension), 
   in my view, is the ability to have multiple implementations of 
   a given abstraction.  This is what separates an "object-oriented"
   language (like Ada 9X or C++) from an "abstraction-oriented"
   language (like Ada 83 or CLU).  In an "abstraction-oriented"
   language, each abstraction interface has exactly one implementation,
   and hence all calls on operations of the interface can be
   statically bound.  

One of my favourite languages, ML, allows multiple implementations of
a single interface via parameterisation and to some extent so does
Ada83 via generics.  Can this be reconciled with the above statement?

bevan