[self-interest] Cross-Paradigm Learning

[James McCartney]

On Aug 31, 2004, at 5:45 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:

> Or even
> better, see the Prototype Multiple Dispatch in Slate:
>
> http://tunes.org/~eihrul/pmd.pdf
> http://tunes.org/~eihrul/talk.pdf
>
> and
>
> http://slate.tunes.org/
>
> They currently use a very Self-like inheritance model, but plan to move
> in a different direction.

One problem with the prototype multiple dispatch scheme, if I 
understand it correctly, is that methods become uncollectable garbage 
unless ALL of their specialized arguments are collectable. This is a 
problem if you are multiple dispatching on arguments that live forever 
like true, false and nil. Because roles are stored in each object that 
participates in a method dispatch, once you define a method on an 
object, that method lives as long as any of the argument objects lives. 
This would make it tricky to create ephemeral objects with unique 
behavior that use multiple dispatch.

Hopefully one of the Slate folks can speak to this..

-- 
--- james mccartney