Deutsch English Français Italiano |
<20240930135208.00004170@gmail.com> View for Bookmarking (what is this?) Look up another Usenet article |
Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: TeX and Pascal [was Re: The joy of FORTRAN] Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 13:52:08 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 42 Message-ID: <20240930135208.00004170@gmail.com> References: <pan$96411$d204da43$cc34bb91$1fe98651@linux.rocks> <5mqdnZuGq4lgwm_7nZ2dnZfqnPSdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <vcub5c$36h63$1@dont-email.me> <1r0e6u9.1tubjrt1kapeluN%snipeco.2@gmail.com> <vcuib9$37rge$5@dont-email.me> <vcvuhh$3hroa$2@dont-email.me> <llhieuF8ej2U2@mid.individual.net> <20240925083451.00003205@gmail.com> <Pascal-20240925164718@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <mdd4j63pmo1.fsf_-_@panix5.panix.com> <oJ-cnQSrLZDYdGX7nZ2dnZfqnPWdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <vdatb6$1l4ch$8@dont-email.me> <vdauah$1lq1u$1@dont-email.me> <20240930110933.00002ec1@gmail.com> <appeal-20240930203239@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 22:52:13 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="32a37bac0a08e2ecfa3e3c65131391e5"; logging-data="2508705"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+MoFhjRyMku4TXrMrtZ1CgXhdmIAJSeCw=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:sZNS+UVX0lnJAp1+8BgabRcU7TI= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.2.0 (GTK 3.24.38; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Bytes: 3893 On 30 Sep 2024 19:32:56 GMT ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote: > John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote or quoted: > >This bears repeating. As someone whose initial exposure to OOP > >concepts was via C++ (and then Java,) I spent *years* never > >understanding what the appeal was. Wasn't until I encountered > >Smalltalk, way on down the line, that I finally *got* it. > > Can you explain what the that appeal was? I must confess that I haven't made enough use of it myself to say how well it holds up in real-world usage (it certainly has its proponents, but so does basically anything,) but ST at its core* has a beautifully consistent, coherent approach to OOP design compared to C++ (where the OOP elements are clearly a bolt-on to something else which never feels entirely natural or particularly necessary - how many C++ programs are really just C programs with a different file extension, or at best use iostream because it's easier than reconfiguring printf format strings every time you change what debug info you're logging to stderr?) * (I say this because it seems to have accreted a substantial layer of other-stuff - ST people are really, really into model-view-controller design, f'rexample, and the GUI has evolved on a parallel track to basically everything else in the world since the '70s, so it's not terribly intuitive for anybody accustomed to Mac/Windows/X/* - that may or may not be a natural fit with its way of doing things, but isn't strictly essential to what I'm describing.) With ST, it's "objects all the way down" (at least 'til you hit that magic ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain barrier that every HLL has at some point, which is still admirably low compared to most "friendly" languages,) and the underlying design makes it possible to examine and modify even a substantial portion of the runtime itself. This gives it a kind of self-similar quality that reminds me of Lisp - nothing is magic, even the "magic" bits (the primitives generally have a "reference" version in pure ST, when possible,) and everything's made from the same kind of stuff. That's what I find appealing about it; I haven't worked with it enough to say whether it's truly *useful,* but in its own way it *is* beautiful.