Re: Please vote for Syntax check in /FREE!

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

jt wrote:
> ...
> Overloading is a feature of *most all* OO languages, unless I'm mistaken
> (and I may be).  Now, from a strictly technical DEFINITION of OO languages,
> I'm sure you're correct that it is not a REQUIREMENT.  So, if RPG had
> operator overloading, would (or would it not) be an OO language...??
>
> All that merely evades discussion of my point, however, which is:  Why does
> RPG need to become OO in the first place.  See Mr. Greenspun's article on
> Java, if you didn't.

Well, the current discussion is about method (or procedure or 
function) name overloading, not operator overloading, as someone 
else pointed out.

OO languages with method name overloading:
C++, Java, C#, Ada 95.

OO languages without method name overloading:
Eiffel, Smalltalk, Ruby, Perl 5, Python, Object Rexx, Modula 3.

Is method name overloading necessary for OO? No.

Does RPG need to become OO? No. Definitely no.

Would procedure name overloading be useful to RPG programmers? Quite 
possibly, and we here in RPG development are not averse to the idea. 
And as far as I'm concerned, it would not bring you any closer to OO 
in the language. OO is about a heck of a lot more than crufty, 
hard-to-learn, or fancy syntax.

Regarding Greenspun's opinions on Java, read them carefully please. 
A google turned up this blog entry that I thought was interesting: 
<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/09/20#a1762> (I don't know 
if that was the one you were referring to.) Basically, he is echoing 
what many others have said, that using a scripting language provides 
many productivity advantages over Java. Other commentators say 
pretty much the same thing, with some saying that programming in 
Python (to pick one particular alternative language) offers a 5-10 
times productivity advantage.

(BTW, note that most of these scripting languages fall into the 
category of OO languages *without* method name overloading.)

Anyways, perhaps you could remind me which specific article by 
Greenspun you were referring to? In what I've read by him so far, I 
don't see any relevance to RPG.

Cheers! Hans