Re: is OO any use?

Hi!

El Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 02:24:06PM +1200, David McNab escribio:
> Hi,
> 
[...]
> 
> What I'm asking here is - is there any real practical value to be gained
> from supporting OOP in a PIC runtime environment?

There are many levels of OOP support, I think that some of them are
really useful:

* Inheritance: I think that static inheritance (ie, no virtual
               functions) is really usefull. You could do thinks like
               (in C++/Java like syntax)

      class myUART : extends picUART {
        protected void init() {
          baud=9600;
          parity=picUART.parity.none;
        }
        protected void recive(char c) {
          // Do something with "c"
        }
      }
   
   This type of code could be compiled to something very efficient,
   including support for different types of UART's depending on the
   target chip.

* Polymorphism: This is usefull to write code that can be compiled
   with different types. For example, an algorithm can accept 8 bit
   integers and 16 bit integers, etc.
  
  Again, I think that in a microcontroller environment, only static
  polymorphism is usefull, so the compilar determines which code to
  use at compile time, with no runtime overhead.


        Daniel.