OO and C: Still a Good Idea?

[Tony]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++ object
model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

Tony

 

[dj3vande]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

If everything happens synchronously in a single thread of control and
the sender/caller waits until the message/method processing is
complete, "sending a message" is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT TO "making a method
call on an object".
If you care enough, you can implement this (from either perspective)
with C as it currently exists. There are good reasons to want to do
this, but not very many of them.
If you want to build an object system instead of doing everything by
hand every time, there's a pretty good chance you're going to end up
with something that looks a lot like either Objective-C or C++
(possibly with different syntactic sugar), depending on which
perspective you're thinking in terms of.

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it?

If you want Java/ObjC/Smalltalk/CLOS/OCaml/Ruby/C++/whatever, you know
where to find it.


dave

 

[JC]

Sigh...

I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

It's not 100% backward compatible.

Is OO in C's future?

OO programming is in C's present, in fact. Other languages have
constructs that make it more convenient, but nothing limits you from
OO style programming in C.

Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

You will likely find inspiration here:

http://ldeniau.web.cern.ch/ldeniau/cos.html

That's Laurent Deniau's take on it, which recently came up in yet
another incarnation of a somewhat similar discussion on c.l.c++:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/browse_frm/thread/83ec35fb1ade5f05

Jason

 

[Frank]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++ object
model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

Tony

Tony,

This is an example of a troll. You are not a troll, if I'm to judge.
Furthermore, I refuse to judge.

Ask how OO's going in fortran right now: It's a pain in the ass, but it
basically works if you're not doing anything fancy.

OO would be a disaster for C. Enough decision makers concur so that the
proposal is a compleat non-starter. I hope it never happens, so that I
have some hook in a language that Bjarne hasn't forked up.

I'm trying out a new 'nym and am much distressed to see this output.
--
Frank

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Picture of the Day http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

 

[user923005]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++ object
model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

If we want a C that has OO abilities, we have Objective C and C++.
An object model is not always the best possible solution.
Sometimes a procedural model fits more naturally.

I think it is a mistake to try to warp the native C language into an
OO model, since we already have those attempts.

I don't think anybody knows what the future of C is.
I think that when we try to guess, we usually get it wrong.

 

[Laurent Deniau]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++ object
model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

Tony

for a short introduction you can read:

http://cos.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cos/CosBase/share/doc/cos/slides-cos.pdf.gz

for a longer but a bit obsolete:

http://cos.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cos/CosBase/share/doc/cos/cos-overview.pdf.gz

What is missing to C to do OOP is not an object model (various can be
implemented) but features related to (already proposed) extensions to
C like anonymous structure component or type _Alias (!= typedef).
These features would improve the syntactic sugar of OO in C but the
concepts can already be implemented in C.

a+, ld.

 

[Bartc]

I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being 100%
backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

You want a new language, not compatible with C, that has OO?

There isn't enough choice out there?

 

[Tony]

If everything happens synchronously in a single thread of control and
the sender/caller waits until the message/method processing is
complete, "sending a message" is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT TO "making a method
call on an object".

When I think of "sending a message", I think of something like:
SendMessage(destination, "Hello Chatters!").

If you care enough, you can implement this (from either perspective)
with C as it currently exists. There are good reasons to want to do
this, but not very many of them.

1. The defficiency of other implementations.

If you want to build an object system instead of doing everything by
hand every time, there's a pretty good chance you're going to end up
with something that looks a lot like either Objective-C or C++
(possibly with different syntactic sugar), depending on which
perspective you're thinking in terms of.

There's more than syntax that is of issue.

If you want Java/ObjC/Smalltalk/CLOS/OCaml/Ruby/C++/whatever, you know
where to find it.

Part of my point was that those languages leave something to be desired and
C can "one up" them all if "it" wanted to.

Tony

 

[Tony]

Sigh...

I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

"It's not 100% backward compatible."

Still, backwards compatibility hinders C++, IMO.

Is OO in C's future?

"OO programming is in C's present, in fact. Other languages have
constructs that make it more convenient, but nothing limits you from
OO style programming in C."

First class support is what I was talking about. The cliche you presented
above gets quite annoying (as do all cliches).

Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

"You will likely find inspiration here:

http://ldeniau.web.cern.ch/ldeniau/cos.html"

I downloaded that yesterday, but haven't read it yet.

"That's Laurent Deniau's take on it, which recently came up in yet
another incarnation of a somewhat similar discussion on c.l.c++:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/browse_frm/thread/83ec35fb1ade5f05"

Yes, I've been tracking that thread.

Tony

 

[Tony]

Tony,

This is an example of a troll. You are not a troll, if I'm to judge.
Furthermore, I refuse to judge.

I wasn't trolling. I have a number of techniques that I use in C++ to get
closer to my "ideal language". Now I'm analyzing whether C wouldn't be a
better jumping off point to base a new OO-capable language on. I want to
develop (perhaps) a proprietary/in-house language to use rather than
something for mass consumption.

OO would be a disaster for C.

Yes because of the backward compatibility thing. But a language that
jettisons most (not all) of that seems lucrative to me. Most people take it
too far though and end up with yet another C++ level language rather than
something in between C and C++. IMO, that sweet spot has never been attained
by any language. YMMV.

I'm trying out a new 'nym and am much distressed to see this output.

I don't grok that.

Tony

P.S. Your tagline is abusively long!

 

[Tony]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time
if
it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only
objects,
but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing
popularity
of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was another
muddling
of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++
object
model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather than being
100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

"If we want a C that has OO abilities, we have Objective C and C++."

I have issues with both of those though (which I won't go into here and I
haven't looked at Objective C for years but probably should do so again
given my current needs).

"An object model is not always the best possible solution."

There's that annoying cliche again.

"I think it is a mistake to try to warp the native C language into an
OO model, since we already have those attempts."

Yes we do. I would just use C as a starting point create a new language that
is not nearly as concerned with backward compatibility. (Interfacing DLLs
would still be important for one thing).

"I don't think anybody knows what the future of C is."

A relic in the Smithsonian may be quite nice.

Tony

 

[Tony]

I'd do something like the Windows model. You have a central message queue,
and windows register themsleves with the system. Events then get placed
into the queue and called on the windows, one at a time.

Replace "window" with "object" and you've got an OO system.

Ewww. Then you have Smalltalk and the muddling of "event-driven/msg-based"
with OO. That works for windows but is hardly always appropriate.

Tony

 

[Tony]

You want a new language, not compatible with C, that has OO?

Yes. But that is very C-like and doesn't go overboard like C++ does, IMO.

There isn't enough choice out there?

Apparently not. That's why I'm considering rolling my own.

Tony

 

[Tony]

Cos was already mentioned but GObject <http://library.gnome.org/devel/
gobject/unstable/> might be of interest to you as a heavily used C-based
OO system.

In general, it provides most C++-type OO features albeit in a more clunky
way.

That's the 3rd time it's been mentioned. I'll read the pdf later today.

The functionality you want is here today.

I'm still skeptical as I have been searching.

Tony

 

[JC]

Sigh...



"It's not 100% backward compatible."

Still, backwards compatibility hinders C++, IMO.

Not really.

"OO programming is in C's present, in fact. Other languages have
constructs that make it more convenient, but nothing limits you from
OO style programming in C."

First class support is what I was talking about. The cliche you presented
above gets quite annoying (as do all cliches).

Ask a cliche question, get a cliche answer.

It's a cliche because it's repeated again and again and again. The
reason it's repeated again and again and again is because uninformed
posters / trolls forget that and post the same questions again and
again and again.

HTH,
Jason

 

[dj3vande]

[note followups]

When I think of "sending a message", I think of something like:
SendMessage(destination, "Hello Chatters!").

That's not what Smalltalk or ObjectiveC people are talking about when
they talk about "sending a message to an object".
Do you know anything at all about what you're talking about?

1. The defficiency of other implementations.

OK, I'll bite.
What deficiencies do you see in CLOS that you think you can build a new
system without, without introducing new ones that are worse?

There's more than syntax that is of issue.

Well, yeah. And if you actually look at what the options are, you'll
notice pretty quickly that there are good reasons why the semantics are
what they are.
If you want to do something different, your chances of getting
something that that actually is substantially different and even
*works*, never mind is better, are pretty small.


If somebody gives you an object system, can you give good reasons why
it's inadequate and how you plan to improve on it? (Prove it - start
with CLOS, as mentioned above.) If somebody gives you a base system,
can you give good reasons why it's better than C as a base to build
on? (Prove it - start with Erlang.)
If you want to make something "better" than what already exists, it
would help to understand what already exists.


dave

 

[CBFalconer]

Ask a cliche question, get a cliche answer.

It's a cliche because it's repeated again and again and again.
The reason it's repeated again and again and again is because
uninformed posters / trolls forget that and post the same
questions again and again and again.

No. Every newbie obviously knows how to access the various storage
areas and review all the mislabelled messages that discuss the
subject of interest. He also knows how to avoid the suppression of
messages by the silly no-access header, because he knows who
ignores it. So there is obviously no reason for any question to
ever be re-asked.

 

[Chris M. Thomasson]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time
if it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only
objects, but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing
popularity of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was
another muddling of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++
object model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather
than being 100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other relevant
thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

FWIW, here is a very simplistic OO abstract interface scheme for C:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_frm/thread/1b106926ba5db19f




The link to the code in the post is broken. Here is fixed link:

http://webpages.charter.net/appcore/vzoom/example/interface.zip




Sorry about that.

 

[Chris M. Thomasson]

Objective C was an attempt to bring Object Orientation to C. At the time
if it's incarnation, the prevailing thought was that OO meant not only
objects, but sending messages to them, probably because of the increasing
popularity of event-driven GUIs at the time. (Note that Smalltalk was
another muddling of the two orthogonal concepts).

(At least the above is how I think about the technology of that time).

Personally, I think C is a great place to implement OO "on top of " and
moreso for having the luxury of analyzing the weak aspects of the C++
object model. I would opt for a departure "new" language though rather
than being 100% backward compatible with C (one of C++'s Achille's
heels).

Is OO in C's future? Who's for it? What are the minimal features to get
"adequate" OO capability in the language? (Feel free to add other
relevant thoughts also as this is just a brainstorming post).

FWIW, here is a very simplistic OO abstract interface scheme for C:

[...]

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/msg/6002fd4047cbbe1c

 

[JC]

... snip ...




No.  Every newbie obviously knows how to access the various storage
areas and review all the mislabelled messages that discuss the
subject of interest.  He also knows how to avoid the suppression of
messages by the silly no-access header, because he knows who
ignores it.  So there is obviously no reason for any question to
ever be re-asked.

I do not quite understand what you are saying, but Tony does not seem
to be a "newbie". Additionally, it is highly unlikely that I was
referring to all repetitive questions on any topic in general, and
highly likely that I was referring to this specific thread.

Jason