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Alan Kay and OO Programming

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Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#21

Post by cryptica »

>> Extreme late-binding is important because Kay argues that it permits you to not commit too early to the "one true way" of solving an issue (and thus makes it easier to change those decisions), but can also allow you to build systems that you can change while they are still running!

>> Binding can also refer to binding a variable type to data.

As someone who has over 15 years of experience going back and forth between statically typed and dynamically typed programming languages (but who has settled on dynamically typed languages in the last 4 years), this statement resonates very strongly with me. Also, it ties in perfectly with my philosophy of focusing on integration tests instead of unit tests; the idea that you should lock down the features of your system but keep the flexibility to move around the all the internal implementation is critical.

It's a shame to see the new generation of developers moving back to statically typed languages (e.g. TypeScript) instead of actually trying to understand how to use dynamically typed languages properly. The obsession around achieving 100% unit tests coverage is equally shameful.

Many of the people who came up with or promoted the idea of dynamically typed languages had decades of experience working with punchcards, assembly code and statically typed languages; they were onto something. Why does the new generation so easily discard this vast amount of wisdom?

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#23

Post by Pop2019 »

cryptica wrote: post #21

>> Extreme late-binding is important because Kay argues that it permits you to not commit too early to the "one true way" of solving an issue (and thus makes it easier to change those decisions), but can also allow you to build systems that you can change while they are still running! >> Binding can also refer to binding a variable type to data. As someone who has over 15 years of experience going back and forth betw…

Everyone gets this one wrong. It's static typing within objects and dynamic typing outside of objects. Sadly we don't have languages with good micro/macro split. Maybe Axum only.

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#24

Post by DSingularity »

slifin wrote: post #16
kstenerud wrote: post #3

I'm not sure I understand why late binding and Alan Kay style messaging is desirable. If you send a message to something that's supposed to do a task, and it just ignores your message because it was the wrong type or whatever, how are you supposed to debug that, or reason about the correctness of your program at all?

Not that I'm advocating the approach but I think the benefit is that if your recipient is out of action then your callee survives In a typical Simula I program (C++ Java PHP C# etc) if you fatal in your recipient's object your callee and the entire program is going to come crashing down, in something like erlang the callee can keep going Before jumping to putting everything on a queue, there are downsides like you've…

Why better without async? You feel the same about std::async?

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#25

Post by Ovid »

nudq wrote: post #22

https://lobste.rs/s/8yohqt/alan_kay_oo_programming#c_5xo7on >> He doesn’t have random opinions about “objects”, he invented the word > Kay did not invent the term “object”.

Alan Kay says he did.

"I'm sorry that I long ago coined the term "objects" for this topic because it gets many people to focus on the lesser idea."

Source: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#26

Post by Pop2019 »

LandR wrote: post #4
warent wrote: post #2

I have a ton of respect for Alan Kay and think he's a genius. But why does it seem like every time he talks about OO it's always painting an apocalyptic picture like we're in some kind of twilight zone alternate nightmare reality of broken patterns and models? Surely our concept of objects and OOD can't be that bad, but his apparently contrary outlook is just so persistent...

> I have a ton of respect for Alan Kay and think he's a genius. But why does it seem like every time he talks about OO it's always painting an apocalyptic picture like we're in some kind of twilight zone alternate nightmare reality of broken patterns and models? Because we are? Have you seen most OOP code-bases, they are a train wreck!

JavaScript is functional and oh boy!

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#27

Post by mirsadm »

kstenerud wrote: post #3

I'm not sure I understand why late binding and Alan Kay style messaging is desirable. If you send a message to something that's supposed to do a task, and it just ignores your message because it was the wrong type or whatever, how are you supposed to debug that, or reason about the correctness of your program at all?

In my experience silent failure leads to some of most difficult to debug systems that end up in a not quite right state. Fail as early as possible has always worked better for me, bugs are found much earlier.

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#28

Post by rndmio »

cryptica wrote: post #21

>> Extreme late-binding is important because Kay argues that it permits you to not commit too early to the "one true way" of solving an issue (and thus makes it easier to change those decisions), but can also allow you to build systems that you can change while they are still running! >> Binding can also refer to binding a variable type to data. As someone who has over 15 years of experience going back and forth betw…

Because having some guarantees about the correctness of my code before it goes into production is valuable. Because the system I develop on is not the system that will run the code. Wisdom is not being discarded, the importance of different factors is simply not universal.

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#29

Post by jompe »

cryptica wrote: post #21

>> Extreme late-binding is important because Kay argues that it permits you to not commit too early to the "one true way" of solving an issue (and thus makes it easier to change those decisions), but can also allow you to build systems that you can change while they are still running! >> Binding can also refer to binding a variable type to data. As someone who has over 15 years of experience going back and forth betw…

I'm a fresh graduate from uni so I'd say that I don't have that much experience. My last years working on the side of studies using Python really made me prefer strongly typed languages like Haskell, Rust, Elm etc. My experience is that the compiler almost always finds my small errors and would-be-bugs which Python exposes at runtime (crashes with e.g. None-type errors).

What would you say the benefits are with dynamic typing?

Re: Alan Kay and OO Programming

#30

Post by LandR »

Pop2019 wrote: post #26
LandR wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a ton of respect for Alan Kay and think he's a genius. But why does it seem like every time he talks about OO it's always painting an apocalyptic picture like we're in some kind of twilight zone alternate nightmare reality of broken patterns and models? Because we are? Have you seen most OOP code-bases, they are a train wreck!

JavaScript is functional and oh boy!

Yes, but Javascript developers aren't functional.

In either sense of the word.

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