From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,c890e6ab3fb2c5fc X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,c890e6ab3fb2c5fc X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-02-01 14:37:48 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!EU.net!sun4nl!hacktic!mbase97.xs4all.nl!gijs From: gijs@mbase97.xs4all.nl (Maarten Landzaat) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Message-ID: Organization: M-BASE Subject: Re: Subject/Object Confusion Syndrome [was: Ada Objects Help] References: <3f9g1u$j4m@nps.navy.mil> <3fu6qc$pc5@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> <3g3uc0$hm6@watnews1.watson.ibm.com> <3g49bu$7fv@nps.navy.mil> Reply-To: gijs@mbase97.xs4all.nl X-Software: HERMES GUS 1.10 Rev. May 17 1993 Date: Thu, 02 Feb 1995 00:37:48 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Xref: nntp.gmd.de comp.lang.ada:18669 comp.lang.c++:89197 Date: 1995-02-02T00:37:48+02:00 List-Id: John Volan writes: >... excellent stuff on why syntactic sugar IS important. Not many people seem to share this interest in the influence of syntax on design, readability and other important things. When I was learning computer science on the university, I always wondered why I had to say things like Show(Window, 33, 45, over_there, graph); While I could already envision that Show my graph in a standard window at position (33,45). wouldn't be too hard for a computer to translate, especially if I had told him before that Show (object) (how) at position (x,y) was about to show up somewhere in the program. I thought that this was a wonderful idea, but no-one seemed to see the big difference between the two. Still I think that ease of use and understandability can make the difference. Look at the difference between X400 and internet adresses. Look at the success of PCs after Windows came out, compared to the preceding MSDOS. On the same line: I once mentioned in comp.lang.ada that I found the keyword 'tagged' a very confusing and non-intuitive way of expressing object- orientedness. But nobody seemed to mind. I didn't expect that from people interested in a thoroughly designed language as Ada. On "robot.mow(the_lawn)": To my surprise, many projects I've seen that claim to have object oriented designs, have 'objects' like Process_Messages, Initialization, Sender etc. Terrible! It's OK if designs are like this, but calling them object-oriented is just another way of saying "I don't know what OO is, and I don't know the difference between a procedure and a variable". Just some thoughts... -- Maarten Landzaat (gijs@mbase97.xs4all.nl) Amsterdam, Double bass, Fender Jazz Bass, Atari ST, Roland Sound Canvas. Listen to M-BASE music!