In article <403947c4@news.povray.org>, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
wrote:

> OK, honestly, I misspoke. Folks were talking about C++ style 
> programming, and said something about lacking virtual functions. I 
> equated that to lacking dynamic dispatch, because that was kind of the 
> environment it was discussed in. The only dynamic dispatch in C++ is 
> virtual functions (or pointers to functions).

Ok, I was just talking about OO in general, not narrowing it down to a 
specific implementation.


> Sure, messages and methods are more than virtual functions. Objective-C 
> basically took the messaging model from Smalltalk and pasted it on top of C.

That's basically it. Works pretty well, actually, though it does look 
funny...and no blocks, unfortunately. There is the concept of "higher 
order messaging" that might take their place...


> > Virtual functions are just a specific implementation detail, not a core 
> > requirement for object oriented languages.
> 
> Correct. But I'd contend that dynamic dispatch (i.e., the same name used 
> at the same point in the program meaning different invocations at 
> different times in the execution of the program) is a core requirement.

I agree.


> > BTW, have you ever looked at Dylan?
> 
> No, but I've used Smalltalk. What's unique about Dylan that I should 
> look at it? :-)

Well, the name is an abbreviation of "Dynamic language". It's object 
oriented and very, well, dynamic. You mentioned Eiffel and said some 
things that made me think you were familiar with Smalltalk, so I thought 
you might know about Dylan...I don't know a lot about it myself, but it 
looks interesting. Hmm...
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Dylan/
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_dylan.html

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

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