on OO v. FP, and why lang's like Ruby feels so good

[Henning von Rosen <address@hidden>]

in relation to our long-ago discussion on OO v. FP, and why lang's like 
Ruby feels so good and transparent to use, no matter how superior some 
langs might impress theoretically/formalistically:

"""Animacy is a powerful conceptual tool with which to analyze programming 
paradigms (see Table 3.2 for a summary). In particular, it can help explain 
the specific appeal and utility of object-oriented programming, which has 
in recent years become an extremely popular model for commercial 
programming. OOP is fundamentally just a way of organizing a program, and 
it has not always been clear why or even if it is a superior way to do so. 
Animism provides a theory about why OOP is powerful: its particular style 
of modularization divides up a program so that animate thinking can be 
readily applied to any of its parts. Functional programming, on the other 
hand, provides a model that systematically excludes animism, which might 
explain why, despite its undeniable theoretical advantages, it has little 
popularity outside of a small research community.
"""
from
"Programming with Agents:
New metaphors for thinking about computation"
by Michael Travers?
http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~mt/diss/index.html

this text is of high relevancy to language design. A must-read!
and it does a great job of clarifying and justifying the role of 
metaphorical thinking in CS/lang-des.

amike via Henning

PS. for those who havn't read it already, please take a look at FPS by 
Thomas Kühne for an interesting description of the possibilities and 
conditions for integrating OO and FP concepts in one lang.

  http://www-agce.informatik.uni-kl.de/~kuehne/fps/ free-copy-by-mail.