LK thread continued

brassplume brassplume at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 5 00:41:44 UTC 2009


Hi Adam,

Thank you for addressing my questions. 

"The way I usually think about it, classes are a fine idea; it's just
the idea that "every object is an instance of a class" that causes
trouble. The value of prototypes isn't that you suddenly organize your
entire code base in this whole new completely-different way; it's that
the core of the system becomes simpler and more flexible and easier to
learn. That flexibility lets you use some fun new organizational
patterns, but the good old "class" pattern is still an important one."

You can't add flexibility without adding complexity. That's an axiom of language design. The more simple the language, the more responsibility is foisted on the programmer.

The flexibility comes because you've put the Squeak methods on surfboards: they can go anywhere. And the emphasis on inheritance is by FAR a bigger deal and responsibility for the programmer. It offers huge possibilities such as multiple inheritance, but, again, that puts more emphasis on the programmer. 

I think learning Self will expose me to a toolkit that will teach me not only to be a better programmer, but why people are so confused when they try to use JavaScript. 

Implementing classical inheritance in JavaScript sucks ( http://javascript.crockford.com/protoypal.html ) and if JavaScript programmers could understand "Organizing Programs Without Classes", they'd be far less confused. 

Chris 








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