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From: Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Joy of this, Joy of that
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2024 08:26:26 +0000
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On 11/23/24 01:41, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Nov 2024 01:08:16 +0000, Pancho wrote:
> 
>> On 11/23/24 00:44, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, 22 Nov 2024 23:07:19 +0000, Pancho wrote:
>>>
>>>> I learnt Smalltalk before I learnt C.
>>>
>>> Smalltalk is an interesting language. But I think it’s considered a
>>> little too unconventional these days ...
>>>
>>> Does it do multiple inheritance? I can’t remember.
>>
>> No, not that I remember. Classes, Metaclasses, Single inheritance, very
>> clean.
> 
> “Metaclasses” were just a bit of a hack to implement what Python would
> call “classmethods”. 

I think the Smalltalk idea of treating classes as objects, is the 
opposite of a hack. It is a very clean and simple idea. Even today I 
still think metaclasses are the easiest way to imagine some behaviour of 
OO languages.

I would say C++ static methods and static variables are a hack. C# type 
reflection is a hack. Just as value types are a hack in C#. Things that 
are sensible for performance reasons, but that add complexity.

It was easy to see where Python metaclasses came from.


> Python also has “metaclasses”, in the sense that
> classes, being first-class objects, must be instances of something -- and
> that something is the metaclass.
> 
> Not sure if any other language has that meaning for “metaclass”.
> 
>> I think Smalltalk was more a teaching tool rather than anything
>> people used commercially
> 
> I’m pretty sure it has been used commercially, back in the 1980s or
> so, maybe even the 1990s. 

Probably, just as some people program in Haskell or Prolog.