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Popular conceit about learning programming languages

Pascal Costanza costanza at web.de
Mon Nov 25 17:28:44 EST 2002 
maney at pobox.com wrote:
> Jacek Generowicz <jacek.generowicz at cern.ch> wrote:
> 
>>When you call a subroutine, you are calling a specific piece of
>>code. The caller decides what will be executed. When you pass a
>>message, the decision as to which exact code should be executed is
>>made elsewhere (some form of dispatch).
>>
>>But it looks as if my understanding of message passing is different
>>from Pascal's.
> 
> 
> Maybe, but probably less so than you imagine.  You're desribing it from
> the relatively concrete, implementation side; Pascal has preferred the
> fuzzy, metaphorical language that was introduced, IMO, in an effort
> either to make a useful but trivial formalism sound like it was
> something wonderful, or to hilight the important new ways of thinking
> about and structuring programs that the formalism (ie., language
> support) made much more convenient.  This is Monday, so today I'll say
> it was the former, handwaving; on Tuesdays I prefer the metaphor as
> pedagogical device.  And so it goes through the week...

Do I sense some irony here? ;)


Pascal

-- 
Given any rule, however ‘fundamental’ or ‘necessary’ for science, there 
are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the 
rule, but to adopt its opposite. - Paul Feyerabend
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