Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
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Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#2I was once one of the "luky 10.000"[0] about this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/program-management/
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#3Seems like a cool era to be working on computers. For lack of a better phrase, the world was your oyster.
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#4Fine. But obviously it caught on for other reasons, like code reuse and an intuitive mental model.
The HN appetite for posts ragging on inheritance will never be sated.
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#5I was once one of the "luky 10.000"[0] about this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/program-management/ [0] https://xkcd.com/1053/
If it has a Snopes article debunking it, it's the inverse of the lucky 10,000 since "everyone knows" the wrong fact
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#6Fine. But obviously it caught on for other reasons, like code reuse and an intuitive mental model. The HN appetite for posts ragging on inheritance will never be sated.
What benefit does inheritance provide over importing files containing functions? Ruby and loads of other languages let you import files and those functions work like they were part of the class itself.
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#7Fine. But obviously it caught on for other reasons, like code reuse and an intuitive mental model. The HN appetite for posts ragging on inheritance will never be sated.
"Catching on" doesn't mean "is the right way to do things". Code reuse is in fact a prime example of a misuse of inheritance
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#8Fine. But obviously it caught on for other reasons, like code reuse and an intuitive mental model. The HN appetite for posts ragging on inheritance will never be sated.
What benefit does inheritance provide over importing files containing functions? Ruby and loads of other languages let you import files and those functions work like they were part of the class itself.
Many benefits (e.g. attaching behavior to instances rather than modules, though there are other ways to accomplish the same goal), many drawbacks (fragility, yoyoing, etc.). C could be described as "files containing functions", and C++ was originally "C with classes", so it's not like "files with functions" is a revolutionary idea. This is all extremely well-traveled ground.
I'm happy these days using languages like Rust and Go that avoid classical inheritance, so I'm not here to argue in favor of inheritance. I'm just irritated by the pile-on.
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#9I think discussions of OOP and inheritance often miss the influence of Knowledge Representation on OOP: I’m not entirely clear of the history myself, but I’ve gotten the impression that knowledge representation research (things like frame systems) was a semi-independent influence on the design of OO systems
Re: Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What benefit does inheritance provide over importing files containing functions? Ruby and loads of other languages let you import files and those functions work like they were part of the class itself.
Many benefits (e.g. attaching behavior to instances rather than modules, though there are other ways to accomplish the same goal), many drawbacks (fragility, yoyoing, etc.). C could be described as "files containing functions", and C++ was originally "C with classes", so it's not like "files with functions" is a revolutionary idea. This is all extremely well-traveled ground. I'm happy these days using languages like…
I’d also add that live systems like Smalltalk avoid a lot of the fragility and dynamism of inheritance by the way the browsers show all the currently active extensions to the class, and all the current subclasses in a fairly compact view. It’s a lot easier to find and modify affected child classes in this way than it is with “code in files” systems.
Also, the way CLOS does inheritance avoids a lot of the drawbacks too by decoupling classes and inheritance from behavior.