[3768] in java-interest
Re: Re[2]: RFC "Off the Web Java"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (R.Volkmann)
Mon Nov 27 13:54:07 1995
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 08:40:18 -0600
From: "R.Volkmann" <m224873@svxtrm14.mdc.com>
To: Horlock.Neil.%.ext06lon@ft.com
Cc: tahmed@on.bell.ca, java-interest@java.sun.com
In-Reply-To: <0b43d6b0@smtpgate.ft.com> (Horlock.Neil.at.ext06lon@ft.com)
Reply-To: "R. Mark Volkmann"<m224873@svmstr01.mdc.com>
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>The template issue is one which has interested me recently. I am investigating
>Java from a geneeral language point of view with no fixed intention towards
>internet development but more towards extensible platform independent
>distributed applications. While I am no expert in OO languages the template
>mechanism in (recent) c++ seems anideal mechanism for general purpose
>collection classes and so forth. However templates are as far as I'm aware only
>a c++ feature, how do other OO languages deal with this issue esp. smalltalk
>and of course Java?
Templates are not needed in Smalltalk because:
- variables can be set to refer to any object, not just objects of a
certain type
- all methods (or member functions in C++) are virtual
These features allow a collection class to contain objects of any class.
A message can be sent to any object in the collection that supports the
message. Ideally you would only put objects into a collection that could
respond to all of the message you intend to send to objects in the collection.
The C++ camp will say that this is dangerous because sending messages to
objects that cannot respond to them will not be discovered until run-time.
The Smalltalk camp will say that, in practice, this is not a problem and that
most such errors are discovered in testing. Since I'm not really a Smalltalk
programmer I'll let it go at that.
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