[PD] Objects vs Classes (was: libraries in Pd-extended 0.43)

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Tue, 12/14/10, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: [PD] Objects vs Classes (was: libraries in Pd-extended 0.43)
> To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at at.or.at>
> Cc: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>, "PD List" <pd-list at iem.at>
> Date: Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 3:23 PM
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, Hans-Christoph
> Steiner wrote:
> 
> > Pd doesn't really have classes like OOP (i.e. no
> inheritance),
> 
> Inheritance is not an essential feature of OOP, if you
> consider how much this feature varies a lot from one OOP
> language to another, moreso than other features.
> 
> The more essential features of OOP are data-abstraction,
> encapsulation, polymorphism, modularity, ... and in nearly
> all lists of typical OOP features, one is missing (but
> essential in practice) : the idea that multiple objects
> share a single class definition (that is, "methods" belong
> to "classes", not directly to "objects"). Pd's
> "abstractions" are precisely that : one patch is a class,
> and each use of that patch as an objectbox in any another
> patch is an object.
> 
> In short, there's a lot that programming languages have in
> common, that are typical OOP features, without having to
> even speak about inheritance.
> 
> > so I think it can be confusing to use that term.
> 
> Confusing with what ? What's confusing is that you guys use
> one word for two things that are normally given two
> different names in every other language : object vs class in
> most cases, object vs prototype in some others, instance vs
> class, etc.
> 
> The confusion comes from people who insist on using the
> word "object" to mean "class".
> 
> > People have been saying objects for a long time with
> Pd and Max.
> 
> In itself, that doesn't make it a good idea.
> 
> The Pd/Max mentality of "we're soooo completely different
> from everything else !" doesn't serve much more than egos.

You've used this argument before.  I don't remember exactly what the 
topic was-- maybe recursion-- and you made the point that pretty 
much verbatim-- that Pd is very different from everything else.  
I don't know, maybe you were talking about "tactics" (see below).

> In the end, problem-solving in Pd/Max is fundamentally
> similar to that of any other computer programming (in the
> strategies, not the tactics)

It looks as if you a) wrote the "we're-soooo-completely-different" 
straw man, b) realized it might apply to yourself, and c) decided 
to give yourself an escape route by making an arbitrary division 
between strategies and tactics.  (How is it that the Pd tacticians 
are reasonable people but the Pd strategists are egomanical?)

-Jonathan

> so, any kind of isolationism
> is a manner of making it unnecessarily harder for other
> programmers to understand us, and vice-versa. If we adopted
> standard vocabulary, we could focus on real differences
> between Pd/Max and other languages, instead of terminology.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________________________________
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