In article <40392ffb@news.povray.org>, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
wrote:

> Christopher James Huff wrote:
> > Oh? Objective C doesn't have anything called virtual functions.
> 
> They're not called that, but that's the effect. Messages are dynamically 
> dispatched to the appropriate method.

It's more than a different name for the same thing. Virtual functions 
are just function calls that are looked up at run-time through a virtual 
function table. Message lookup is based on a message selector that is 
itself a piece of data the program can manipulate. You can forward 
messages that you can't handle, for instance. You can even send them to 
objects on other machines. The overhead is higher, but surprisingly low. 
Virtual functions are just a specific implementation detail, not a core 
requirement for object oriented languages.


> I've found it useful to learn a bunch of different languages, if only to 
> understand useful paradigms, even if I never obtain a compiler for them.

I agree. If you don't keep learning new things, you'll end up being 
unable to.

BTW, have you ever looked at Dylan?

-- 
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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