Re: Inheritance in SmartEiffel

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 08:45 +0100, Frank Salter wrote:
> As some discussion is now under way in other current threads about 
> possible mechanisms to achieve some specific and therefore limited 
> objectives, I would like to return to some questions I posed to language 
> theorists about inheritance.  As the only previous  response was a 
> thoughtful discussion of the problem, I wondered if the questions I 
> asked demonstrated my lack of understanding,  to which I will readily 
> agree, or were the questions of themselves not readily answerable?

I think this is the second case. There's an agreement that the old
inheritance mechanism has shortcomings, and it's clear that there is a
conflict between Nonconforming Inheritance and 'Current'.

I've looked for it at several places, and I think this is the first time
the problem has been stated (at least publicly on the Internet). And
this level of language design is tricky (if you want to avoid nasty
interactions like the one you found), so I guess we won't find a quick
answer.

However there's room for a lot of discussions about possible uses of
inheritance, and how well the current mechanisms in Eiffel adapt to it.
I've got a lot of ideas (more about problems than about solutions), and
I like to sort them up to publish them at some time. Not now, it
requires conscious writing, and doing that in English is an extra
effort.

	Daniel