Re: Correct C++ tutorial chapter 2.1 "Classes" available (Windows, mingw/msvc/std)

From: M Jared Finder (jared_at_hpalace.com)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: 29 Mar 2005 16:55:39 -0500
To: (Usenet)

Thomas Hansen wrote:
> Chris Riesbeck wrote:
>
>>And there are many strongly-typed functional programming languages.

Most (all?) useful high level languages are strongly typed. The last
time I used a weakly typed high level language was programming in TCL,
which was difficult due to its weak typing. The languages I use now (C,
Python, Lisp) are all strongly typed.

> But their motivation is still the same, OO is just after all an
> extremity of typesafety.
> Instead of having a method signature with a given type and issuing a
> compiler warning/error when trying to call the method with the wrong
> type you couple the method within the type making it impossible to make
> your sub fly...
> In practise you're right, in theory I must declare that I dissagree.
>
> But I guess this is one of those subjects where we all do alot of
> armwaving and "you know what I mean" stuff...
> At least in the theoretical perspective.
> Let the chicken and egg problem pass us unnoticed!
> ;)

It seems to me like you're looking at OO backwards. OO to me is about
polymorphism, where you think of things in terms of shared interfaces
and per-call implementations. What is dispatched on doesn't matter as
much to me as that the dispatch exists. The dispatch has the side
effect of type-safety, but that has never seemed to me to be the prime
motivation.

   -- MJF

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