Re: Need standard kernel supported class in Lua, was: Macros and expressivity

["Javier Guerra" <javier@...>]

On 1/14/08, Luís Eduardo Jason Santos <jasonsantos@quantumsatis.net> wrote:
> OOP is just too messy, too complex a problem to fit this definition. It
> should be a *use recommendation*, not a language construct. And s such,
> should come in several flavors.

i didn't want to say that, partly because it could easily degenerate
into a religious war; and also because everybody that's asking for OOP
have obviously made his/her mind on this subject, and if somebody just
disregards it, then the rest of the comment is ignored.

i don't think OOP isn't useful, it's of course overrated, but it's
certainly a neat abstraction for many problems.

but...

when somebody say "but lua doesn't have objects!", and the answer is
"build your own!", they go on and build something big and bloated.
why? i think that's because they're trying to bring in all everything
that their favourite language does.

but...

when a given abstraction is included into the (relatively slow moving)
core language, it _have_ to be all things to all people.

when it's just a code writing convention (like how the obj:mth() sugar
encourages), it can be really really simple when you don't need extra
bells and whistles.  just creating a fixed metatable with __index=(the
module table) is enough for a huge number of projects.

'blessing' a given class package would be nice for some projects, but
irrelevant for the vast majority of them.

-- 
Javier