In article <53ded02e$0$29980$c3e8da3$54964...@news.astraweb.com>, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > > > I've reached a point where I think classes are a superfluous OO concept. > > You only need objects. > > I don't know whether "superfluous" is correct, but they certainly are > *optional*. There are at least two types of object oriented programming: > class-bases, and prototype-based. Java, Python, Ruby, etc. are all > class-based. The only example of a prototype-based OOP language I know of > is Javascript, and even that has recently gained the ability to define > classes. > > I don't know enough about prototyped OOP to really give a definitive answer, > but I believe that the popularity of class-based OOP is because there is a > huge body of theory on types, which makes it easier for compiler designers > to reason about classes than prototypes. For example, if Haskell introduces > OOP (and it may already have, I don't know) I would expect it to be > class-based. Also, the first OOP languages (Simula and, especially, > Smalltalk) are class-based, and people tend to copy what's been done before > and what they're familiar with. The first code I ever saw which had any OO concepts was the Unix kernel I/O drivers. The whole thing was written in C. It essentially implemented something we would recognize today as static class inheritance with polymorphic method dispatch. Each driver was required to implement a number of functions (read, write, open, etc), with specified signatures and contracts. Effectively, the all subclassed a (mythical) BaseIODriver. There was a big table where the rows were the different drivers (indexed by major device number), and the columns were the different methods. That was in the early 70s. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
