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Re: records
> > but my understanding is that all of the existing record proposals can
> > basically be implemented on top of GOOPS in one way or another
>
> As I understand the issue guile has a record implementation called
> "struct" and GOOPS is build on top of structs, no?
Yes, but structs will be going away, and GOOPS replanted.
> > Abelson and Sussman argue that object systems are misconceived to
> > begin with. (There's a long footnote in SICP about this; I can't
> > remember where it is, exactly.) Their argument is essentially that
> > nobody has figured out a decent way to describe operations on more
> > than one type. Or something like that. CLOS at least attempts to
> > address this issue, by letting you specialize a generic function on the
> > types of more than one of its arguments. But Java, C++, etc. just
> > totally punt the issue.
>
> I think this is the old "genericity vs. inheritance" problem.
> Bertrand Meyer showed that it is possible to emulate genericity on a
> system that supports inheritance but it is not possible to emulate
> inheritance on a system that only supports generic types/behaviour.
I have a whole series of stupid questions to ask (for example, why do
you say CLOS does not support inheritance?), but instead I'll just say
that A&S don't like CLOS, either. Their position is that all existing
languages present insufficient solutions to the problem.
I'm in California right now, or else I would find the footnote and
type it in.
- References:
- records
- From: thi <ttn@mingle.glug.org>
- Re: records
- From: Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>
- Re: records
- From: Jost Boekemeier <jostobfe@linux.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE>