Re: Time to rewrite dpkg IN IDL! :)
On Fri, May 21, 1999 at 08:26:00AM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
>
> I think a good object-oriented design can be easier to follow too.
> In circumstances where there is naturally some use for inheritance
> it is very useful indeed. I don't see any natural inheritance in
> managing packages, though.
Well just because you don't see one doesn't mean there isn't any. For
example, we can have different package formats (and different versions of
our own format, compatibility!) represented by classes derived from a common
abstract class. This makes adding support for additional formats (or
changing the exisiting format while adding compatibility mode) very easy and
painless.
OO is not only useful for "natural inheritance", or, to put it another way,
there are lots of inheritances were you don't see them at first glance.
> I think that forcing a procedural program into
> classes just for the sake of it would destroy the clarity you're looking for.
Absolutely. Happily, package management is not procedural at all. It can be
implemented in a procedural way of course (anything can). But object
management will be useful.
The recognition for Object Oriented languages has still a long way to go.
Mathematicians are way ahead of programmers with this respect (you see, math
is an OO modelling of the whole world and even more. Math is also
descriptive, but this is orthogonal to this discussion :).
Thanks,
Marcus
--
"The purpose of Free Software is Free Software.
The End and the Means are the same." -- Craig Sanders
Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
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