[Help-smalltalk] Are Objects really hard?

[Janko Mivšek]

Hi guys,

Again one interesting topic for this weekend to discuss. David Nolen, a
Lisp and JavaScript guy posted in his blog an article titled Illiterate
Programming [1] where he said:

"...Yet I think Smalltalk still fundamentally failed (remember this is a
programming language originally designed to scale from children to
adults) because *Objects are really hard* and no-one really understands
to this day how to do them right...."

He links to Alan Kay post [2] back in 1998 where he talks about problems
with inheritance:

"Here are a few problems in the naive inheritance systems we use today:
confusions of Taxonomy and Parentage, of Specialization and Refinement,
of Parts and Wholes, of Semantics and Pragmatics..."

Let we concentrate on broader "Objects are really hard and no-one really
understands to this day how to do them right" claim and not merely
inheritance, please.

Best regards
Janko

[1] http://dosync.posterous.com/illiterate-programming
[2]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-April/009261.html

-- 
Janko Mivšek
Aida/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si