From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2004-03-31T23:44:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Software Maintenance and Prototype Based Languages


"gabriele renzi" <surrender_it@remove.yahoo.it> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1cll6097cj2vidu37i3rqbq91aidjsvecb@4ax.com...
> il Wed, 31 Mar 2004 23:19:19 +0900, Jamis Buck <jgb3@email.byu.edu> ha
> scritto::
>
> >
> >I imagine most people here saw the announcement on Slashdot a few days
> >ago for "Prothon" (a prototype-based language based on Python).
>
> I discovered it on c.l.py but from the long threads started I could
> not understand what's wrong with class-based languages :)
>
> There were people there pointing out how prototypes solved metaclasses
> complication, but I rarely had problem with that complication in ruby.
> I believe metaclasses in python are sort of hard to get, but not in
> ruby.
> And there are languages like java with no metaclasses at all, no?

Java has meta classes: java.lang.Class and then all classes in
java.lang.reflect.

C++ is OO but has only verly little meta information at runtime (i.e. only
type codes AFAIK).

IMHO the general tendency is to make meta information about types
available at runtime.  Many newer languages do so (Java, C#...).

> Anyway, worth noting that ruby should be quoted as an ancestor of
> prothon too ( words of the author) :)

:-)

    robert