Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.c++
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!nielsen.co.uk!peer-news.britain.eu.net!newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!edcogsci!jeff
From: jeff@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
Message-ID: <DM5s1w.4D0.0.macbeth@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <4ecmfo$as9@news2.ios.com> <4ei4og$la1@info.epfl.ch> <s08wx6akhlt.fsf@lox.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 17:17:56 GMT
Lines: 42
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:20676 comp.lang.c++:172082

In article <s08wx6akhlt.fsf@lox.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU> marcoxa@lox.icsi.berkeley.edu (Marco Antoniotti) writes:
>
>One of the things that bothered me most with C++, was this sort of
>"newspeak" which it introduced.  For years people had been working in
>Flavors, Clos, Smalltalk etc, and they pretty much shared a common
>terminology.  Then suddendly, we did not have "methods" any more, we
>had "member functions", we lost the "inheritance" (pun intended) and
>started "deriving classes".

In article <DLywCI.LDG@research.att.com> bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760) replied:

   I think you have your dates wrong. The C++ terminology was picked in
   1979. Then, the work on CLOS hadn't yet started, Smalltalk-80 hadn't
   been completed, and its predecessor was not well known outside a small
   circle of researchers. I don't recall the dates for Flavors and Loops,
   but again these languages were not known outside the AI community for
   quite a few years.

I think it's fine to pick a different terminology for C++, and
certainly so in 1979 when I don't think any OO terminology was
widely established.  I can even be helpful to have > 1 terminology
if it lets us think about something in > 1 way.

On the other hand, Smalltalk terminology seemed to be fairly well
established by the time C++ started to be widely known.  (When was 
the Byte Smalltalk issue, for instance?)  (We might also consider
the publication dates of various books.)

Flavors was significantly before CLOS.  Canon's paper is, I think,
1980, and it says a practical implementation was in use since late
1979.  Other Lisp OO systems were used earlier.

I knew something about Flavors (which is not really a language but
rather part of various languages in the Lisp family) no later than
mid-1980 (but I forget just when), even though I was not (and had
not been) in the AI community.

I knew something about Smalltalk as well, before Smalltalk-80.

(Not that my knowledge shows very much on its own.)

-- jeff
