Re: another take on hackers and painters

[Jan-Willem Maessen <address@hidden>]

Steve Dekorte <steve@dekorte.com> responds to me:
> On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 07:24 AM, Jan-Willem Maessen wrote:
> > Sure, these are all hard questions, and many of them have multiple
> > reasonable answers.  The real question here is this: What do we do
> > with existing instances and client classes when a class definition
> > changes?
>  >
> > I submit that this problem exists in any language you care to
> > name---just replace "class" by "data structure" and "client classes"
> > by "code and data which refer to that data structure" if your language
> > lacks classes.  There's no magic here.  All solutions I have seen seem
> > arbitrary in one way or another.
> 
> Are you familiar with prototype-based languages?

Sure.  Which problem do they suddenly simplify?  If you change the
prototype, what happens to its instances?  Again, I see at least two
reasonable answers, none of which entirely satisfies me.  Or am I
entirely missing your point here?

-Jan-Willem Maessen
jmaessen@alum.mit.edu