On Sun, 2004-08-15 at 02:28, John Prevost wrote:

[structural subtyping]

> At this point, you may be wondering "Why is O'Caml like this?

My stupid answer is "because its correct". 

The kind of subtyping by subclassing used in Java
and C++ is really awkward to use.

Basically the problem is, to extend the capabilities
of your object heirarchy, you inevitably have to 
add a new method to a base class, or equivalently
derive from  an extra base class containing it -- 
which breaks the principle of encapsulation that is 
supposedly the foundation of object orientation: 
such breakage is said to be invasive, and it contravenes the
Open/Closed principle (see Meyer).

This isn't the case for structural subtyping,
where A is a subtype of B simply if it is one --
you don't have to derive A from B -- which might
not even exist at the time you write A.

This means you can write algorithms that work
on sets of classes sharing some properties
(such as a collection of methods) AFTER you define
the classes without invading the class definitions
-- in Java or C++ you'd have to add inheritance
specifications to make this work.


-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net
voice: 061-2-9660-0850, 
snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net



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