Re: Issues with the logical consistency of The Third Manifesto

"Tony Andrews" <andrewst_at_onetel.com> wrote in message news:1100525986.834032.110860_at_z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Marshall Spight wrote:
> > Well, I skimmed it; it was very wordy. Any critique of D&D's
> > "First Great Bluder" is okay in my book; their whole idea
> > is weak. It's pretty funny to hear them complain about how there
> > is no single definition of what an object is, and then conclude
> > that objects aren't tuple. How did they conclude that without
> > a definition of what an object is?
>
> Well, "everyone" agrees that an object has atributes that you can't
> access directly, only via methods; whereas tuples have attributes that
> you can access directly, and has no methods. So even without a single,
> formal definition of an object it is clear that whatever it is, it is
> NOT a tuple!

I hear you, but I don't find this line of thought convincing. Why do objects protect fields with accessor methods? Certainly it's more complicated; what is the benefit that outweighs the complexity cost? It is that this encapsulation allows one to programmatically enforce constraints on the values the object can take on. Would one need encapsulation if one had declarative integrity constraints? I hypothesize not. In which case the distinction you're drawing wouldn't apply.

Marshall Received on Tue Nov 16 2004 - 03:51:50 CET