From: Pierre-Charles David <pcdavid@...>
Date: 2003-08-08T15:28:26+09:00
Subject: Re: [offtopic]Re: Ducktype, right?

"Bermejo, Rodrigo" <rodrigo.bermejo@ps.ge.com> writes:

> >>"If an urn does not
> >>have the properties of an urn, can it truly be said to be
> >>an urn?" 
> 
> A good reading about it  =>Metaphysics by Aristotle
> in last days I was reading it and I was so amazed how it can be applied 
> on programming (OOP)...
> 
>     * (1) *matter*, the substratum which makes possible the new production;
>     * (2) *form*, any actual determination of that substratum;
>     * (3) *potency*, with two significations -- as the immanent power of
>       the seed to develop itself (active potency) and as a capacity of
>       the seed to receive the successive forms of development (passive
>       potency);
>     * (4) *act*, any actual determination of the process of development
>       (in this signification, act is the same as form).

This relation between OO and Aristotle's view of the world has been
explored in a very nice and original paper at OOPLSA'2000:

@InProceedings{   rayside-campbell.oopsla2000,
  author        = {Derek Rayside and Gerard T. Campbell},
  title         = {An Aristotelian Understanding of Object-Oriented
                  Programming},
  booktitle     = {Proceedings of the 15th {ACM} Conference on
                  Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and
                  Applications (OOPSLA 2000)},
  pages         = {337--353},
  year          = 2000,
  editor        = {Doug Lea},
  address       = {Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA},
  month         = oct,
  organization  = {ACM},
  publisher     = {ACM Press},
  keywords      = {oo}
}

The PDF is available on the author's web page (just google for the title).

-- 
Pierre-Charles David (pcdavid <at> emn <dot> fr)
Computer Science PhD Student, �cole des Mines de Nantes, France
Homepage: http://pcdavid.net/