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 > >