[PD] Abstractions x Externals

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, Alexandre Porres wrote:

> Nevertheless, i've seen people say and use inheritance to refer about 
> parent patches sending info to abstractions via arguments. What is the 
> deal there?

That sounds like a casual use of the word that doesn't have to do with 
commonly-used definitions. Others would call it argument-passing or 
parameter-passing.

Nonstandard vocabulary also happens in other programming languages, but it 
does not mean it's a good thing to let it proliferate.

Inheritance usually means that a class is defined as a variant of another 
class, such that if a method is not found in a class, the other class will 
be searched for that method. Thus, methods of objects can come from 
several different classes at once. Nearly all languages that have this 
concept call it "inheritance".

Granted that the word "inheritance" is sometimes used for meanings other 
than that one, but it normally means something automatic, not an argument 
that you have to pass by writing it down.

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