<HEAD><TITLE>discuss@charon: [45] in "Coldmud discussion meeting"</TITLE>
<H1>[45] in Coldmud discussion meeting</H1></HEAD>
<A HREF="/"><IMG SRC="/i-d.gif" ALT="root"></A>
<A HREF="?45"><IMG SRC="/i-back.gif" ALT="meeting"></A>
<A HREF="/help.html"><IMG SRC="/i-help.gif" ALT="help"></A>
<A HREF="1"><IMG SRC="/i-first.gif" ALT="first"></A>
<IMG SRC="/n-fref.gif" ALT="">
<IMG SRC="/n-pref.gif" ALT="">
<A HREF="44"><IMG SRC="/i-prev.gif" ALT="previous"></A>
<A HREF="46"><IMG SRC="/i-next.gif" ALT="next"></A>
<IMG SRC="/n-nref.gif" ALT="">
<IMG SRC="/n-lref.gif" ALT="">
<A HREF="1641"><IMG SRC="/i-last.gif" ALT="last"></A>
<HR><H2>Encapsulation</H2>
<H3>daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wed Nov 17 12:06:17 1993
)</H3>
<PRE>
From: ghudson@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 11:58:53 -0500
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU


On matching: I actually sort of like Joe's idea of a full LALR grammar
handler (regexps, you know, are commonplace; this would be more of a
coup), but that's not something for 1.0.  I'll take a look at bison
and yacc sources and think about it.

But my primary concern here is with explaining encapsulation, and why
clear variables are not an option in Coldmud.

Object-oriented programming has its roots in a much older discipline
which was commonly referred to as data-oriented or data-directd
programming, the idea that users of data structures should be talking
about performing operations on them, rather than manipulating their
representations.  For instance, if you look at the source for the
Coldmud interpreter, you'll see some direct manipulations of the
stack, e.g.:

	stack[stack_pos++] = foo;

Were I to encapsulate the stack, I would probably write all such
manipaulations in terms of function calls grouped together in some
file or as part of some file:

	push_data(stack, &amp;foo);

(I actually do most of my stack operations with function calls grouped
together in execute.c, but I don't encapsulate it entirely.)

One of the first things C++ did was provide a mechanism for enforcing
this encapsulation.  I consider this the most useful feature of C++:
the idea that I can have a single list of function declarations that
determine all the functions which have access to the internal
representation of an object's data.

Something object-oriented programming added to this model is
inheritance.  I've always been pretty skeptical of inheritance; it's
often convenient, but I think people often try to stretch it beyond
its natural usefulness, and because the language is doing a lot of
things behind your back, code becomes less predictable and more
susceptible to non-local changes.  However, when you're dealing with
things like muds or graphics systems, most objects have large,
complicated interfaces, and it's useful to be able to build those up
out of parts and express the dependencies of those parts, so there are
applications for inheritance here.

Unfortunately, I'm seeing an alarming trend in newer object-oriented
languages towards more baroque inheritance and method dispatch
systems, and worse, away from encapsulation.  CLOS is a good example
of a language which goes hog-wild in the degree of complexity of the
method dispatch process (that is, what happens when I call a method),
but has no form of encapsulation whatsoever.

Okay, so why are clear variables not an option in Coldmud?  They're
not an option because it means that I, the parent of object foo, can
affect the value of foo's variable without calling a method on object
foo.  This gives me access to the internal representation of an object
without an interface.

Yes, this means that there is a fundamental difference between methods
(which are "clear") and variables.  Methods are an interface, and are
thus inherited and available to the outside world; variables are
state, and are encapsulated.  Variables exist in a different namespace
for each object and each ancestor of that object, whereas the method
namespace is collapsed together, in a sense.  And yes, this means that
you don't automatically get a functioning copy of an object when you
make a child of it.

What about default inheritance-time values?  Some find it inconvenient
to have to specify default values in a .init method, when that
function could be handled by the language.  Here, I appeal to Occam's
razor: I don't think I really simplify anything by making the language
more complex to make the code slightly simpler.  If I have to keep
track of extra implicit operations to understand how your code works,
then it doesn't help me that your code is slightly shorter.

--GBH

</PRE>
