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Re: Re: OOP in Mathematica

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg28933] Re: [mg28900] Re: OOP in Mathematica
• From: andrzej <andrzej at bekkoame.ne.jp>
• Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 22:27:51 -0400 (EDT)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I think I have to agree Jens-Peer Kuska's basic point,  though I would 
not express it quite as strongly. A couple of years ago I spent some 
time studying Maeder's package and in particular the use made of it in  
Gray's "Mastering Mathematica". I did it basically to learn what OOP was 
and when I did not know anything about it I was enthusiastic about 
learning to write my own programs in that style. However Gray's book 
persuaded me it would be a bad idea. Chapter III of that book contains a 
object oriented treatment of graph theory. Of all mathematical topics I 
can think of graph theory is probably the most suited to this approach 
yet I found soon that in every respect I preferred the treatment in 
Skiena's "Implementing Discrete Mathematics" (the programs from which 
form the Combinatorica package). I think all this amount to is the 
rather obvious fact that in mathematics one is constantly defining 
functions and functional programming offers the only natural way to do 
so. But I  expect that for many non-mathematical purposes OOP may well 
be preferable.

Andrzej Kozlowski
Toyama International University
JAPAN
http://platon.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/andrzej/
http://sigma.tuins.ac.jp/~andrzej/

On Friday, May 18, 2001, at 02:13  PM, Jens-Peer Kuska wrote:

> Hi,
>
> it will *not* help you !
>
>> Hi everybody...
>> I have been toying with OOP(Objected-Oriented Programming) & 
>> Mathematica for
>> quite some time now and I am finaly in the process of implementing an 
>> OOP
>> package for Mathematica. I know that the main reference in this area 
>> has
>> been Maeder's "Classes" package for some time now, but I always felt 
>> it left
>> much to be desired.
>> So, if you used Maeder's package and/or are interested in the 
>> posibility of
>> working with Objects in Mathematica I would appreciate your opinion on 
>> the
>> following:
>> a) If you did use Maeder's package, what do you think of it?
>
> An example for teaching that show OOP is a stupid concept, if
> you have a better one.
>
>> b) What features would YOU like to see in such a package?
>
> Clean functional/logic programming.
> Complete removal of all the sick object orientation.
>
>> c) Anything else you can think of, that might interest/help me.
>
> It is a shame to use such a wonderful well desinged language
> like Mathematica's language to do OOP.
>
>> Replies to my personal email are welcome.
>> Orestis Vantzos atelesforos at hotmail.com
>
> Regards
>   Jens
>
>