Subject: Re: object oriented LISP? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 27 Oct 2000 03:36:24 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3181606584192278@naggum.net> * Christopher Browne | For the most part, the only part that people tend to be familiar | with is the stuff C++ inherited from Simula... Which, by the way, wasn't the truly interesting bits. Simula had garbage collection, coroutines, and supported simulation, hence the name. Bjarne wanted to do simulation, but, due to his proximity to the C world, wanted to do it in a C-like language. None of the stuff that supports simulation in Simula survived into the C world. The kind of object system that Simula has is fantastically optimal for manipulating objects in a simulation. It is simply brilliant. However, if you don't do simulations of mostly real-world things, the object paradigm doesn't really work, the encapsulation stuff is more of a hindrance than a support, and the inheritance mechanisms don't make much sense being the exclusive approach. So Bjarne took all the bits that made Simula good for simulation, junked all the necessary support systems needed for simulation, and ended up with a model that doesn't really fit his support framework (which only does object creation and destruction and rudimentary type dispatch), only to have to add something so incredibly retarded as Templates because he failed to grasp what he had left out in his desire to copy Simula. Bjarne claims to credit Simula, but C++ is a discredit to Simula if it pretends to have learned from it. Simula's pioneering work in object orientation for simulation deserves a legacy, not something so miserably idiotic as C++. #:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush