På Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:45:51 +0100, skrev Xah Lee <xah@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
I think you are mixing up object's and object oriented programming.
Calling atomic entities in a language objects predates object oriented
programming.
For the first 30 years or so there was no sup****t for object oriented
programming in lisp.
Object oriented programs are data driven. That is the
functions/procedures/methods/messages (whatever) all relate to the object.
This is what I will assume you mean.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the sup****t for windows programming in
mathematic seems weak.
Sure you have the tree based display subsystem in the notebiook but it
works essentially to format a do***ent. In particular it is processed
sequentially. (like HTML)
This brings me to one of the weaknesses of relational logic. It is not
just in pattern matching and logic programming but also in relational
databases by the way. It is awkward to represent one to may and many to
many relation****ps.
The data flow in a windows app mens you can wander from one state to
another at random.
This is very difficult to implement with a relational data model.
Thus even languages like Prolog have implemented objects. If for no other
reason than to facilitate writing windows interfaces.
There are problems for which object orientation is the simplest mode.
Lisp is a multi paradigm language. So it sup****ts procedural to-down
programming, bottom up programming and object oriented programming.
There is no style guides in Lisp and probably as many opinions about the
right way of writing Lisp programs as there are people.
For instance Rainer Josvig does most of his work using the CLOS system,
while I am much more reluctant to use it.
For the record describing the Mathematica language as a form of Lisp seems
wrong to me.
Sure it inherits is idea of storing data in trees and using prefix syntax
from Lisp. The essential difference to me is how it handles functions.
Mathematica has relations not functions. So in order to see what code to
call you have to search the database and find which of the definitions
makes the closest match. Like in Prolog order left to right and top to
down is im****tant.
--------------
John Thingstad
