On Wed, 29 Sep 1999 17:18:32 Josh Flowers wrote:
This has a bit of a Jini feel to it...
The one big problem that I have with Java (and Squeak), is that changes to the class libraries easily break the entire system. This is not a very big problem when your dealing with one VM and one set of class libraries, but in a community setting, this is far to fragile.
[snip]
This is very interesting. We're treading, IMO, into Dostoyevskii territory here....
Eiffel, as an OOP/OOD formalism with strict discipline tries to overcome this problem by enforcing the precondition-postcondition type of specifications on its objects and methods. This certainly works, and has a virtue to it, but it has, IMO, a kind of impedance mismatch with the programming and user community.
In particular, in my experience of 24 years in software, the chance of getting users to formalize their wants even applying various incentives, disincentives, etc, is negligible. So, in that case, if one, as a software technologist, wants to use this stuff, one either takes on the entire responsibility of translating their imprecise requirements to precise ones or one needs to be very mean and force such elucidation out of users. Either choice is not very much fun and is just plain unrealistic.
The other problem with it, IMO, is that it is based upon a fundamentally elitist view of software and software development. IMO, the thing which motivates the Web and Smalltalk and especially Squeak is the idea that This is a Big Conversation, tolerant of imprecision, understanding that things will be imperfect, yet in it for the long term payoff. It is, IMO, a lot more like playing music as part of an ensemble or orchestra than it is a reply of Bourbaki's finished proofs. In the context of a music group, it's not that "mistakes" aren't made, it's that they are bounded and -- in some cases -- exploited towards a group end.
Yeah, I agree that classes can be fragile. But, again IMO, the benefit to be achieved by making all open for development outweighs whatever risks are incurred. We aren't deliverying refrigerators, at least not yet. I feel we should think of them as the little things that go wrong in the opening scenes of "Honey, I Shrunk Ourselves" or of "Back to the Future". Without risk and the possibility and encountering actual failure there is no learning and no growth.
Sorry for rambling so long. ________________________________________________ Jan Theodore Galkowski demiourgos@smalltalk.org home.stny.rr.com/algebraist/ squeak.org/ www.smalltalk.org/
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