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List:       xml-cocoon-dev
Subject:    Re: Zope vs. Cocoon
From:       Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu () cup ! hp ! com>
Date:       2002-02-28 22:38:43
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On Thu, 28 Feb 2002 16:30:39 +0100, Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org> wrote:

> > Any method call in python is done thru reflection.  Calling a
> > method in python means looking in the attribute hashmap of the
> > object for a function object of that name.  You can modify the
> > values of the hashmap and even add or delete methods at runtime.
> > 
> > Python interfaces, are defined thru documentation only, not a
> > static type system. That's very handy for a language, which's
> > greatest strength is rapid prototying.
> 
> Yes, well, might be handy for rapid prototiping, but I consider it a
> limitation because I consider strong type safety a must in order
> create solid architectures.

Not really. Do you know MacOS X? Do you know the language on which
it's built?

It's called Objective-C, and is an object-oriented, C-based, compiled
language, very similar with Smalltalk in its dynamic nature. The
compiler does type checking, but at runtime you can do whatever you
want with objects. You can even send messages to objects that don't
implement them.

You'd think this is not a useful feature, but it was on NeXTSTEP (the
precursor of MacOS X) where I saw more than 10 years ago the best
distributed objects technology I've seen so far. Remote objects would
appear as local objects in you application, and you could import any
object from a remote application, without having to have the system
create any class stubs for you. The implementation was done in only
two classes, Connection and Proxy. Proxy was a special class that
implemented no methods at all (well, except a special one). It would
instead be used to represent a remote object. When you send a message
to this class, the special method would be invoked. As arguments to
this method you had the original name of the method that was invoked,
plus all the parameters of the call. This method would use the
associated Connection instance to send them to the remote application,
where the actual invocation happened. The results would be simply
returned over the wire, and returned from the local method invocation
as if everything was local.

Many other things, including the GUI framework, with the best
architecture I've seen ever, benefited from this dynamic and un-typed
language. The whole system was robust, easy to use and to program more
than 10 years ago. Even now, beside MacOS X, you can hardly see
systems so nicely architected as this one. I think they rightly say
that languages shape the way we think.

Greetings,
-- 
Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu@cup.hp.com>
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/7464/ (GNU, Emacs, other stuff)

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