NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/object/3336

Text File | 1992-08-27 | 1.8 KB | 38 lines

Newsgroups: comp.object
Path: sparky!uunet!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!objsys
From: Bob Hathaway <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: O.M(...) vs M(...), and is the Real World O-O?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 19:50:22 GMT
Organization: Object Systems
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Lines: 27

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stephen J Bevan) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Hathaway) writes:
>   Coplien uses the same terminology, that using the dynamic types of
>   all arguments, with M ... or O.M ...  notation, is called
>   multi-methods.  Please don't get this wrong again, its getting
>   ridiculous.  You can say: "We in CLOS don't like others using the
>   O.M ... notation to use the term "multi-methods" for their
>   multiple-polymorphism even though this is becoming a standard
>   practice." But I think a single term is preferred to two.
>
>So lets take the CLOS one.  After all, as far as I'm aware it predates
>both Coplien's and you useage of the term.

Then we'd be left with the more verbose but precise: "multiply-polymorphic
methods" terminology.  People might still get confused over whether "methods"
referred to CLOS, classical OO or some other kind of method.

Anyway, I lookup up multi-methods and found the following quote by David Moon:
"CLOS chose generic functions rather than messages in order to minimize the
number of new mechanisms added to COMMON LISP."  He goes on to say there is
no difference between the two approaches and that the CLOS designers simply
didn't want to divide programs into two parts, an "OO" part and a "function-
oriented" part.  CLOS stores methods specialized to a class with that class
anyway.

bob
[e-mail]