Re: TeX and Pascal [was Re: The joy of FORTRAN]

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

On 30 Sep 2024 19:32:56 GMT
ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

This bears repeating. As someone whose initial exposure to OOP
concepts was via C++ (and then Java,) I spent *years* never
understanding what the appeal was. Wasn't until I encountered
Smalltalk, way on down the line, that I finally *got* it. 

Can you explain what the that appeal was?

With ST, it's "objects all the way down" (at least 'til you hit that
magic ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain barrier that every HLL has at
some point, which is still admirably low compared to most "friendly"
languages,) and the underlying design makes it possible to examine and
modify even a substantial portion of the runtime itself.

  I see. So, it seems to me that what you discovered was more
  about Smalltalk specifically than about OOP concepts in general.
  I thought maybe you could give some insights about what OOP is
  and what any advantages or disadvantages of it might be because in
  your "I finally *got* it", I assumed that "it" referred to "OOP".