Re: Syntatic sugar and identifier permissivity

[Craig Brozefsky <craig at red-bean dot com>]

Jost Boekemeier <jostobfe@calvados.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> writes:

> No.  But I see that I wrote "message" but meant "function". :)
> GF are messages but methods are functions.

You are still mistaken.  At this point tho I have to attribute your
instistence on this incorrect conception of GFs as either willful
misrepresentation, or a lack of knowledge.

> > There is quite a difference between Perl and CLOS on this matter.  In
> > Perl, Packages and Classes are the same
> 
> That's another thing.  In any reasonable OO system classes (in the
> sense you use the word) and packages are the same.  However, it is
> important to group classes into a higher level construct.  In guile
> this is the module, in Java it is called "package", in eiffel this
> construct is implicit, in perl this construct is a directory.

Your use of the word "reasonable" is a colloquialism.  We disagree
quite vehemently on this point.  I can only offer the entire field of
CLOS implementations as my argument.

> Yes.  The fact that the module to which a method belongs is not
> visible at run time is a bug.  See Kiczales paper or our discussion on
> this list: "no external overrides".

In CLOS, methods do not belong to any module or class, they are
attached to a generic function.  There is a reason for this. It allows
for things like customizable method dispatch, :around method,
optimization of method dispatch at runtime, the (call-next-method)
macro (which passes arguments along as well).

It seems that in attempting this protectionist scam of "no external
overrides" you are dead set on neutering GOOPS.  Be my guest.

-- 
Craig Brozefsky                      <craig@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software  http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
"Hiding like thieves in the night from life, illusions of 
oasis making you look twice.   -- Mos Def and Talib Kweli