Re: OOP Language for OS Development

[stevenwurster@lycos.com (Steven Wurster)]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message news:<1082738747.300309@master.nyc.kbcfp.com>...
> 
> It appears from my looking up what once functions do,
> that arguments to the call are irrelevant for determining
> whether it should be re-executed. If so, that's another
> example of a hideous language design choice made by Eiffel.

Explain why.  Don't just say it's 'hideous' without giving rationale.


> Speaking of hideous design decisions. This whole concept
> of classes having fine-grained dictatorial control over
> whom they allow access to their innards is more than a
> little silly.

Why?  You need to provide your reason for your opinion.  Selective
exporting is way ahead of the public/protected/private of C++ and
Java.  A good example is the visitor design pattern, in which the
visit routines should only be available to the accepting classes. 
This is easily done using selective exports in Eiffel.  But in C++ one
must either make the routines public, which violates encapsulation, or
make *every* accepting class a friend, which violates information
hiding and requires a lot of programmer bookkeeping.

Steve