[EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : (snip) >>> I would like to be able to get a good hold of the concept >> state machines ? > > Well both state machines and classes (objects). That may be a bit of a > tall order to take on all at once but the concepts seem to be quite > related.
They are, since OO was born from the use of state machines for simulation (the Simula language). But you can do state machines with a database and a procedural language too, and FWIW, the "state machine" aspect of OO is more often very informal and ad hoc. > I already have a great deal of material on Classes so good to > go there. Don't confuse "classes" with OO. The "OO" in OOP means "object-oriented", not class-oriented, and nothing in the most basics definitions of OO [1] requires nor even imply the notion of "class". This notion is mostly an artifact for easing the definition of a family of objects having similar implementation, and some 00 languages managed to get by without classes (look for "prototype-based languages" - the most known being javascript). wrt/ Python, classes are actually objects too, and instances have a reference to their class. Since one can dynamically modify the instance object -> class object relation at runtime, we're quite close to prototype-based languages !-) [1] "an object is defined by an identity, a state and a behaviour." -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
