Re: s-exprs + prototypes

[Pascal Costanza <address@hidden>]

On Mittwoch, Juni 25, 2003, at 05:52  Uhr, Steve Dekorte wrote:

>
> On Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 09:19 AM, Anton van Straaten wrote:
>> Hey, you turned my analogy upside down and broke it!  OK, bad 
>> analogy.  When
>> it comes to functions vs. objects, I see functions as atoms and 
>> objects from
>> any given object model as a particular class of molecules, i.e. not 
>> all
>> possible molecules.
>
> Why aren't objects atoms? (be careful that your answer is hardware 
> neutral)

This whole discussion is bogus, because you are comparing apples and 
oranges.

The object-oriented paradigm and the Lisp paradigm (so to speak) are 
not comparable.

The object-oriented paradigm is deeply rooted in a very specific 
perception of reality. It is essentially an understanding of reality as 
instantiated in the physics of Newton and defended on a philosophical 
level by Kant. The idea is that that the world is made of separate 
entities that communicate solely via proximal effects. In OOP terms, 
objects send messages to each other and each object can react to 
messages in its own terms.

The Lisp paradigm is rooted in the belief that there is no single right 
perception of reality. Instead, a language has to provide the building 
blocks that allow you to reconstruct any perception of the world.

So what you are discussing is the question whether a single-paradigm 
approach is preferable over a multi-paradigm approach, or vice versa. 
These two views cannot be reconciled by definition. The proponent of a 
single-paradigm approach thinks that he/she has found the right model 
for any description of the real world whereas the multi-paradigm 
proponent thinks that things can be so vastly different from instance 
to instance that no single paradigm can ever be suitable to each and 
every description of the world. [1]


Pascal

[1] These are descriptions of extreme points of views. Of course, there 
are more mild options in between. For example, one can think that OO is 
suitable in 90% of all the cases, so it's safe to opt for it.