Re: logically weird loop

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:

On 05.12.2024 02:07, Tim Rentsch wrote:
>

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:
>

Actually, if you know Simula, coroutines are inherent part of that
language, and they based their yet more advanced process-oriented
model on these.  I find it amazing what Simula provided (in 1967!)
to support such things.  Object orientation[*], coroutines, etc.,
all fit together, powerful, and in a neat syntactical form. - But
"no one" is using Simula, and my friend was using C++; don't know
what C++ supports in that respect today.  I know that he implemented
the "simulation" parts (queuing, time-model, etc.) in C++ himself.
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[*] It was the language who invented Object Orientation [...]

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No, it wasn't.  First, programming in a language with classes and
objects does not imply object-oriented programming.

>
It does not necessarily imply it.  But if you'd know some more about
it you might understand that it's the natural way of thinking when
simulating systems' objects, and modeling object structures.  Simula
in a natural way provided the platform to program object oriented.
(As said, without coining the term or speaking about "OO".)

I've been doing object-oriented programming, as explained by Alan
Kay, since the late 1970s.  I've written code in Simula 67, three
different versions of Smalltalk, and C++.  C++ is a pale shadow
of Simula, and Simula is a pale shadow of Alan Kay's vision of
object-oriented programming.  People who think programming in C++
or Simula encourages object-oriented programming don't understand
the term.

Second, the
underlying ideas of object-oriented programming pre-date Simula 67
by five years or more.

>
Of course the ideas were there before Simula was released in 1967;
the inventors (also publicly) presented their ideas five years ago.

The key ideas underlying object-oriented programming were not done
by the people who developed Simula.

That history has been pointed out by
Alan Kay, who is the originator of the term and is responsible
for pioneering the concept.

>
Yes, the Simula "OO" pioneers didn't invent the *term* "OO", but they
were (amongst) the first who spread the ideas and the first inventing
a language to model OO and work with the OO concepts that are still
used and implemented in many other OO languages nowadays.

You are confusing programming with classes and objects as being
the same as object-oriented programming.  It isn't.

(All the rest is [IMO] no more than dogmatic or marketing.)
>
If you have some substance on the topic I'm always interested to hear.

Let me offer some stories out of my own experiences.

In the mid 1970s, I listened to Alan Kay teach his class, over two
years, officially titled Philosophy of Computing but unofficially
titled The Alan Kay Mystery Hour.  A lot of times I was baffled by
why he was talking about what he was saying, but I understood what
he was saying.  At least that's what I thought at the time.  I might
add that there was no direct explanation of either the Smalltalk
language or object-oriented programming -- both were mentioned but
pretty much only in passing.  My reaction then was mostly that here
is another guy with a favorite language but programming languages
are all basically the same.  (I had already been exposed to Simula
before taking Alan's class.)

A year or so after finishing Alan's class, I took a class titled
(IIRC) "Object Oriented Programming", taught by three graduate
students who had worked in Smalltalk (which at the time must have
been Smalltalk 76).  The course was basically how to program in
Simula as though it were Smalltalk.  I was already proficient in
Simula before starting the class, and had no trouble following
what they were saying, programming-wise.  But in one class hour
something interesting happened.  Someone asked a question, and
the answer blew my mind.  It was an epiphany.  Suddenly lots of
the things that Alan had said fell into place;  my perspective
had changed.  For two years Alan had been talking over my head,
and in fact so far over that I hadn't even realized it.

Later, in the early-to-mid 1980s, I went to graduate school at
the University of North Carolina.  While there I had some
conversations with Fred Brooks about (among other things)
object-oriented programming.  I tried to give an example that
would let him understand the idea I was trying to explain.  I
could see by his reaction that it didn't help;  the idea hadn't
gotten across.  A year or two later one of the groups in Fred
Brooks's programming projects course (I don't remember the
official title) chose to do their project in Smalltalk.  During
the end-of-course review/demonstration, a question about was
asked about changing the behavior of one part of the program
(which had a visual representation so it could be seen as soon as
the change was done).  The person demonstrating said the change
could be made in two minutes.  When Brooks prompted with "Let's
see", the demonstrator made the change on the spot.  That made a
strong impression on Fred Brooks;  he looked over at me with an
expression that said "there really is something to what you've
been saying".

That demonstration was possible not because of classes and
objects but because Smalltalk embodies the principles of
object-oriented programming.