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From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: OASYS not Object-Oriented
Message-ID: <rwallace.724242696@unix1.tcd.ie>
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Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
References: <3150121@hpsemc.cup.hp.com> <appelo.724066690@dutiak>
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 10:31:36 GMT
Lines: 29

In <appelo.724066690@dutiak> appelo@dutiak.tudelft.nl (C.J. Appelo) writes:


>This is all fine with me. But Russel just shouldn't have called it's
>language object-oriented. I've studied object-oriented languages in the past
>few months and OASYS doesn't belong in this category. TADS and (I believe)
>ADVSYS are much more object-oriented. They support inheritance (single or
>multiple) and polymorphism in some way or the other, I guess. These too
>however, do not support encapsulation. Which, IMHO, is crucial for
>software engineering practices.

The newsreader seems to have stopped behaving erratically, so I'll
follow this one up myself: You are correct in saying that a full-blown
O-O language is essential for O-O software engineering practices,
particularly data hiding. However, this is not relevant to adventure
games, which are typically written by one person and are of relatively
low complexity. Now, whether a particular language is to be called
"object-oriented" or not comes down to what one takes the words
"object-oriented language" to mean, debate on which is in the long run
sterile, so I think we can agree to disagree on whether or not I should
have called OASYS object-oriented. I don't think it is lacking any
features that are needed for writing adventure games (though it is most
certainly lacking features that would be needed for writing other types
of software).

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
