Re: OO Preprocessor for Ada

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!inmet!spock!stt@ucbvax.Berkeley .EDU (Tucker Taft)]

In article <14JUL199318572374@cl2.cl.uh.edu> RILEY@cl.uh.edu writes:

> . . .
>I realize that Ada 9X will support (by most definitions) OOP.
>However the 9X implementation will not have the "look and feel"
>that OOProgrammers expect. 

It would be interesting to have more explanation of this.  There
are many "OOP" programmers who have looked at Ada 9X, and most of them
made no mention of any "look and feel" problems (of course, they
might have *other* complaints ;-).  Could you be a bit more specific?

Here are some possible look and feel issues:

  1) Prefix notation  
      i.e. blah.operation(params) instead of operation(blah,params)

      Note that CLOS doesn't use prefix notation, and with "friends" in
      C++, prefix notation is abandoned when it is useful to do so
      (e.g. for symmetric handling of binary operators).

  2) Combining type and module into a single "class" construct

      Many OOP languages don't make this combination.
      In particular, the "Object-Pascal-like" languages typically
      have an "object type" and then some other kind of module
      (e.g. a "unit" in Turbo Pascal with Objects, or a "module" in Modula-3).
      Even good old C++ seems to be heading toward a separation of
      module and type, with the "namespace" proposal for ANSI/ISO C++.

Are there some other "look and feel" issues you had in mind?
Which "look and feel" issues in your view make a significant 
difference to the usability of an OOP language?

> . . .
>John D. Riley

Thanks in advance...

S. Tucker Taft     stt@inmet.com
Ada 9X Mapping/Revision Team
Intermetrics, Inc.
Cambridge, MA  02138