Re: [ANN] HOM paper available
Re: [ANN] HOM paper available
- Subject: Re: [ANN] HOM paper available
- From: T Reaves <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 20:16:05 -0400
On Sep 9, 2005, at 1:22 PM, Marcel Weiher wrote:
On 9 Sep 2005, at 15:04, T Reaves wrote:
--snip--
It's easy to fall into the trap common to a lot of new ideas, at
that is: 'this is a great way of doing things and all things
should be done this way.' In other words, just because something
could be accomplished with HOM, does no imply it should be.
Hmm...I think you're preaching to the choir here. HOM is not a
panacea (nor has it ever been promoted as such) but applicable to
coding situations where you see recurring patterns of code that you
cannot easily capture otherwise. The patterns that occur in
iteration are an example, as are things where you find yourself
mucking about with selectors or bracketing message sends.
Another point to realize is that HOM is at very early stages and
this has a number of implications. One is that we are not used to
thinking about problems in a messaging style, but rather in terms
of functions, methods, statements, and therefore try to translate
problems into that terminological framework. Another, well
possibly the same, is that as people start actually playing with
it, it will become clearer which applications it is suited for.
I didn't mean to imply that I knew what any of the authors
intentions were! :) I was simply trying to continue a very
interesting discussion. I'd truly like to see more in-depth
discussion on software development n general.
A - perhaps over simple - example of this is the example
from the mentioned paper dealing with add all of one persons
direct reports to another persons direct reports. In that
example, the author showed how to do it with HOM; but it should
never actually be coded that way. It was more difficult to
understand than a more traditionally coded means of accomplishing
the task. Perhaps a hybrid of HOM and traditional messages would
have solved the issue more gracefully.
More difficult than what? And for whom?
I also don't understand what you mean with a "hybrid of HOM and
traditional messages". HOM is always used in such a mix at various
levels.
I think more difficult for any casual reader of the code. I
didn't paste the example into the e-mail, but I was specifically
referring to the keyword 'each'. When I add one collection to
another, sending the message 'each' to one of the collections I don't
think makes much sense to anyone reading it, with the possible
exception of the code's author. That's not an indictment, merely a
impression.
What I mead by a hybrid is exactly what the word hybrid means: a
combination of the two. So, again from the above referenced example,
you'd use HOM on the receiving object as it was presented in the
paper, but not to the second object who's collection was to be added
to the first objects. So there would be one HOM message, and one non-
HOM message.
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