Re: objects and forth

"However, as a model for factoring code or designing components, it is
horrible."

Could you elaborate on that point a bit?

Thanks

On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:00:18 -0500, "David J. Goehrig"
<[email protected]> said:
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 05:40:21PM -0800, tom arnall wrote:
> > 
> > what's the forth community thinking about objects these days?
> 
> Well while I can not speak for the community at large, I can say that
> there is a growing recognition within the Smalltalk VM developer
> community that they need to break their bad habits.  A lot of the JIT
> solutions are focusing on breaking out of the "objects must be
> represented directly in code" mindset and are starting to think a lot
> more like forth programmers.
> 
> Further more, if you look at what the PEG people have been working on,
> with their parsing executable grammars, as a forth programmer you'll see
> how a bunch of object people go about implementing Forth.  It is really
> quite fun to watch them struggle with concepts that would be easy if they
> simply adopted a directly manipulable return stack.
> 
> At the heart of nearly every ML dialect is a forth implementation
> screaming for air too!  (SML NJ is a perfect example, its dictionary
> would make any Forth programmer feel right at home).
> 
> So while the views of the forth community may be more or less the same as
> they were years ago, the other communities, that are actively struggling
> with simplicity, are starting to think more and more like forth
> programmers.  At the current rate of "progress", most programmers on the
> planet will have no concept how their programs work, and the few who do
> will grok forth.
> 
> People who get excited about 'objects' simply don't understand indirect /
> vectored execution.  Mistaking a conceptual model / metaphor for an
> implementation strategy / design has never been particularly good idea. 
> Although those who understand OO only as a matter of faith, will still
> see this issue only according to their dogma, those who understand forth
> are free of the messy ideological restrictions.
> 
> My personal thoughts on OO is that it is a good model for describing
> interfaces between pieces of software that reside in separate process
> spaces.  However, as a model for factoring code or designing components,
> it is horrible.  As for how we train new programmers in "OO Patterns",
> without any of the historical perspective, all we are doing is creating a
> new religion;  a religion in which new programmers take on faith
> programming techniques as design dogma, rather than understanding them
> for what they really were.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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