[Edu-sig] Refocusing on Capabilities (was PySqueak)

[kirby urner]

On 5/26/06, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:

> I think there's two issues: classes and inheritance.  I don't think
> inheritance is a particularly respected structure in Python.

???

> Inheritance is a sometimes useful implementation technique.  I think
> it's wrong to think of it as more than that.  Probably we need better
> support for some other competing techniques.

Composition is a commonly used competing technique.  Then of course
we're free to just write functions, outside of any class.

In my thumbnail of language history, I talk about
(1) wild west spaghetti code
(2) structured programming
(3) OO
(4) design patterns.

It's very possible to write ultra-confusing OO code, so in some sense
1 is to 2 as 3 is to 4 (structured programming reformed the
spaghettifiers, while emphasis on DP corals and controls the
undisciplined OOers).

I'm sort of leaving out the evolution of functional programming in the above.

KIrby