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Re: MI: why?
: Scott Ribe <sribe@miqs.com> wrote in message
: 387CD2A9.1D7DF8A@miqs.com">news:387CD2A9.1D7DF8A@miqs.com...
: >
: > It's interesting to note that the only OO languages without MI are
: > either older, early generation OO (Smalltalk, Objective-C, Object Pascal)
Java is not an older OO language, and it doesn't have MI. For some reason
I keep hearing that interfaces are a form of MI, but this is completely
misleading. If this were the case, then Smalltalk's ability to provide
polymorphism without explicit interfaces would also qualify as MI, but it
clearly doesn't.
-Carl
Eric Clayberg (clayberg@instantiations.com) wrote:
: Not true in the case of Smalltalk. Smalltalk is designed to easily support
: MI and early implementations had it. It was ultimately rejected as adding
: too much complexity and not enough benefit. You can even get MI as an add-on
: package for Smalltalk, if you really want it. The reason it is not included
: in any of the major commercial implementations today is that very few
: customers are asking for it. Dynamic typing, unlimited polymorphism, simple
: proxy mechanisms and a host of other features add up to minimize the actual
: usefulness of MI in the Smalltalk context. That is not to say that MI would
: not be very useful in other languages with different feature sets.
: -Eric
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Carl Gundel carlg@world.std.com Shoptalk Systems 508-872-5315
author of Liberty BASIC, a 1996 PC Magazine Awards Finalist!
http://world.std.com/~carlg/basic.html
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