Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#1

Post by granular » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 1:33 AM UTC

Is Smalltalk the best? Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO? How does CLOS measure up? Where do C++ and Java land on the scale?

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#2

Post by SwellJoe » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 1:42 AM UTC

Is Smalltalk the best?

Define "best".

Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO?

It is more complete. Better? Maybe, maybe not. It's very nice, though.

How does CLOS measure up?

Measure up to what? Other LISP object systems, or Smalltalk, and Moose, and Python?

Where do C++ and Java land on the scale?

On a scale of 1 to Verbose, they're pretty far up the scale.

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#3

Post by asimjalis » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 2:52 AM UTC

What's the goal of this ranking? What are you trying to accomplish?

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#4

Post by jackdied » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 4:08 AM UTC

emacs or vim? You aren't asking a technical question, you are asking a religious question.

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#5

Post by mahmud » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 5:38 AM UTC

jackdied wrote: post #4

emacs or vim? You aren't asking a technical question, you are asking a religious question.

No it's not a religious question. You and I can take our respective dieties to task by choosing a test problem, then praying hard to see whose diety exists/answers, etc. Most likely, both of us will be disappointed (otherwise I would have had a jetpack by now :-)

Quality of object systems can be tested by posing a computational problem and letting people solve the problem in their language/object-system of choice, we can then rank the answers by various criteria (development speed, code clarity, code speed, system integration, run-time portability, scaling, maintenance costs, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#6

Post by granular » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 6:50 AM UTC

asimjalis wrote: post #3

What's the goal of this ranking? What are you trying to accomplish?

I was hoping it would lead to comments such as, "$lang1's OO implementation is good, except that it's missing $feature_X and $feature_Y, which means I can't do $technique_Z", or "$lang2's OO impl is more useful to me than $lang3's because it allows me to do $U and $V which I can't do in $lang3".

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#7

Post by granular » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 7:01 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #2

Is Smalltalk the best? Define "best". Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO? It is more complete. Better? Maybe, maybe not. It's very nice, though. How does CLOS measure up? Measure up to what? Other LISP object systems, or Smalltalk, and Moose, and Python? Where do C++ and Java land on the scale? On a scale of 1 to Verbose, they're pretty far up the scale.

> Define "best".

As someone replying to the discussion topic, you may choose any interpretation of "best" that you wish. In fact, that would be preferred, as it would probably produce more interesting discussion than me attempting to rigidly define "best" in order to allow someone to post "given your definition of 'best', language Y is 'the best'".

How about this: which language's OO implementation do you like the best, and why?

Re: Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support.

#8

Post by kngspook » Sun, Jul 05, 2009, 10:47 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #2

Is Smalltalk the best? Define "best". Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO? It is more complete. Better? Maybe, maybe not. It's very nice, though. How does CLOS measure up? Measure up to what? Other LISP object systems, or Smalltalk, and Moose, and Python? Where do C++ and Java land on the scale? On a scale of 1 to Verbose, they're pretty far up the scale.

I'm not sure I'd call C++ verbose...at least, not in the same way Java is.

Java takes a lot of characters to express an idea. C++ (usually) requires you to take a big idea and break into smaller parts than Java might (because Java has large libraries).