Re: hash arrays and other mysteries
Re: hash arrays and other mysteries
- Subject: Re: hash arrays and other mysteries
- From: Chris Page <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 04:15:04 -0700
[Warning: Getting out my soapbox...]
nigh on 2001.10.22 4:26 AM, Jason W. Bruce at email@hidden wrote:
>
AppleScript doesn't have multiple inheritence, true. But neither does
>
Smalltalk or Java. From an object-oriented design perspective, multiple
>
inheritence is questionable.
Not to pick on Jason, but I just have to jump in here and say that the last
sentence above requires a response, especially considering the number of
people on this list who are learning about programming using AppleScript.
Multiple inheritance (MI) can be a wonderful and indispensable tool,
depending on whether the language you're programming in supports it well
(this, of course, can be restated as a very general truth about programming
languages not specific to MI). C++, for example, has some gotchas that make
using MI inconvenient. Dylan, on the other hand, is specifically designed to
support MI well, and it is commonly used throughout quite a lot of Dylan
code, successfully and cleanly.
Some people might also say that object-oriented programming is questionable.
They are fools. All programming -- even if the language you're using doesn't
explicitly support objects -- is object-oriented unless you're writing
spaghetti code. Much in the same way that all programming is structured
programming, even if you're using assembly language, unless you're expecting
your code to be an un-maintainable morass.
OOP, and in particular inheritance (multiple or not), are organizational
concepts that should always be used when programming, and should be applied
as best as they can in whatever language you are using. These ideas should
not be confused with particular language features or judged by how poorly
they may be supported in one language or another.
Bringing this back to AppleScript, it would be a good exercise to think
about how best to approximate MI when MI is the right solution to a problem.
[I'll put away the soapbox now.]
--
Chris Page
Mac OS Lead, Palm Desktop
Palm, Inc.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one9s work is a giant talking wheel of cheese. - Bertell Russrand