Re: object instance names generated on the fly?
Re: object instance names generated on the fly?
- Subject: Re: object instance names generated on the fly?
- From: David Halliday <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:04:15 -0600
Ben Dougall wrote:
On Saturday, March 22, 2003, at 09:36 am, Aram Greenman wrote:
On Friday, March 21, 2003, at 02:03 PM, Ben Dougall wrote:
i want to create multiple instances of a particular object.
You don't create instances of an object, you create instances of a
class. An instance is an object. In Obj-C, a class is also an object,
although this is not the case in all OO languages.
Minor technicality, but you can see how it generates confusion.
yup fair enough, the word object on it's own is ambiguous that's for
sure. i wouldn't say that that an object is an object instance though
- it can be, but not necessarily, as you said yourself above - it can
mean other things. i find people can mean either/both the class and
instance when they say object. so there's potentially three different
meanings of object there, and there's probably more.
personally, in my mind, i change the word class for object blueprint
(because i don't like the word class - doesn't help me), so then i've
got object blueprints and object instances which makes things much
clearer, for me. and object, on it's own, remains pretty general, and
therefore potentially confusing - yes, best avoided.
This is a fine definition for languages, like C++, that have no
class objects (where classes are only programming constructs that
provide an object blueprint for "object" instances). However, for
languages, like Objective-C, that have class objects (objects that are
themselves classes, often instances of meta-classes), there are at least
two kinds of things that have the right to the term "object" (hence the
use of that term for multiple kinds of things [not to mention the use of
that term for compiler "object" files, or anything else that is in some,
potentially nebulous way, encapsulated into a single "thing"]).
However, due to the potentially ambiguous nature of the term
"object" most programmers that have experience with languages with class
objects tend to avoid the use of the term "object" (though I find I tend
to use it in contexts where /any/ [OO] object, whether class instances,
class objects, or others may be used, such as "passing a message to an
object").
I hope this helps.
David Halliday
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