Re: SFTP Question

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Vernon Hamberg
<vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Happened to see something about the system being object-based - a term I've
heard and used. It says the OS is not object-oriented, because it does not
include the OO trait or feature of inheritance - seems to me, this isn't
exactly right - I mean, everything has basic attributes of an object that it
shares with all other objects, then there are distinction for things like
program and files and from there, display files, printer files, DDS-type
PFs, DDL-type tables - that seems like a lot of inheritance.

The term "object-oriented" is general enough that if you want to
interpret it as a layperson, you can, but then it loses its
usefulness. That is, its meaning becomes so diffuse that you could
start to call just about anything "object-oriented". Y'know, because
almost all "things" are "objects".

The tricky thing about OO is that even as a technical term, there is a
lot of debate over what it really entails. Some folks don't consider
inheritance an essential part of OO. To really understand and use the
term meaningfully, you have to familiarize yourself with several
technologies that *self-purport* to be OO, and then kind of glean the
essential bits by feel.

It's not easy. It's not some list of features. It's more a way of
thinking. If you collect the feature lists of all the OO technologies
out there, you probably won't find a single *meaningful* feature that
shows up on every single list. And whatever understanding you may
develop about what OO is, you'll still find OO proponents who disagree
with you.

There are enough other OO characteristics the system does not have - seems
inheritance is one it DOES have in some way - am I missing something?

Maybe the biggest thing is simply that OO almost never arises in
technical conversations outside the context of programming.

I mean, essentially, you're saying that IBM i has an "object-oriented
file system". Er, I guess so. But since this is independent of
programming on the i, I think whoever described it as "object-based"
may simply have felt uncomfortable using OO to refer to the file
system.

John Y.