Re: OOPs!! When is a class not a class? (Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language)

On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 08:29 , Philippe Caquant wrote:

>  --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> skrev:
[snip]
>> OK - Philippe, if your only experience of using
>> objects is JavaScript,
>> maybe we had better not continue using the class ~
>> object analogy
>> otherwise we are very likely to be talking at
>> cross-purposes, which won't
>> help anybody.
>>
> As I understood from Flanagan's "JavaScript" (I'm
> currently at page 344 of the French edition, and there
> are 955 in all), JavaScript in not a real OOP, but it
> more or less behaves like an OOP.
Either your Flanagan ain't the David Flanagan who wrote "JavaScript: the
Definitive Guide"  or he's changed his mind or something has gone awry in
the translation. In "JavaScript: the Definitive Guide" (page 137 of the
Third edition) he writes:
"The truth is that JavaScript is a true object-oriented language. It draws
inspiration from a number of other (relatively obscure) object-oriented
languages that use prototype-based inheritance instead of class-based
inheritance."

By 'other' he means other than classic OOP languages like C++ and Java,
which uses class-based inheritance.

> As I don't know Java
> neither C++, it's hard for me to explain it smartly.
> What I know is that JS has no types
Is this your first experience of an untyped language? You've a lot to
learn  :)

> and confuses "+"
> and "concatenate" (well, it doesn't really confuse
> them, it only makes it very likely that you will have
> problems with that some day),
Eh?? But "+" is commonly used for concatenation. I've used it for years
and so far have had no problems.

>
> So, when I'l be through with JavaScript, I'll learn
> Java (probably at least 1500 pages ?) and C++, and a
> dozen of other things, including DHTML, XTHML, XML,
> XSL, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Unix, vi, Apache, Tomcat, etc,
How can you learn Apache?? It's a webserver (and a ood one too IMO) -
unless you actually mean the language of the Apaches of North America
(That's much more interesting!). Isn't vi an editor? and Unix an operating
system, and...  - such a mixed bag of tools here. You sound like a
carpenter bemoaning having to learn how use all the different tools of
carpentry.

> and then I maybe will be able to send "Hello, world"
> on the internaut's screen,
I hate to disillusion you, but it is quite easy to put a page on the
Internet that says "Hello World" and you do *not* need  DHTML, XTHML, XML,
  XSL, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Unix, vi, Apache, or Tomcat in order to do it!

> There is something rotten in the Kingdom of Programming, IMO.
How very sad. But I'll not rise to that bait again.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004

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