Eppur si sugat

[Chris Pressey]

On Wed, 28 May 2003 07:46:41 +0100
Peter-Henry Mander <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> As for the debate, it looks as if you are all fighting over how to 
> formalise the OO "method." Joe, from the FP camp desires to see the 
> formal definition of OO to enable comparison with the formal
> definition of any FP language. Such definition _does_not_exist_ for
> OO, because it has grown out of day-to-day experience and "best
> practices" of programmers in the trenches who don't necessarily have
> time or the inclination to write a thesis about how they get results.

Really?  The "Object have not failed" remarks from Garry's link seem to
imply that it has been formalized at least once.

> [...] Unfortunately some marketing bright 
> spark came up with a "OOh!" to "Wow!" management, and the rest is 
> history. In this world the best technical solution doesn't even win on
> merit, and I think Joe (and I) get upset because of that.

As do I, believe me!

I like the hard-nosed pragmatic approach a lot, myself - judging things
on their merits instead of their popularity.  It's why I run FreeBSD
instead of Linux, qmail instead of sendmail, and to a large degree,
Erlang instead of <<insert name of popular language here>>.

Unfortunately I don't think countering glamour with it's diametric
opposite, obloquy (i.e. "that sucks") is very effective, and I really
don't think it's going to be effective if it's directed at the thing
that just happens to be glamourous in the situation...

Wish I had the time to respond to more of these emails.

> Pete.

-Chris