On (07 Apr 97) Pierre Phaneuf wrote to Frank Masingill...
 PP> While it is true that C++ is *way* off from being a true
 PP> object-oriented programming language,
No it isn't.  Saying otherwise shows only that you don't know what the
phrase actually means, or that you're ignoring what it means.
 PP> the Borland/Turbo Pascal (with objects) isn't much closer to object
 PP> paradise...
Let's true to keep terminology straight here: there's not necessarily
any correlation between being a true OO language, and being close to
paradise, or even a usable language at all.  If you wanted to, you could
create a language that was undeniably completely object oriented, yet
was completely unusable.
 PP> The Pascal described in the Extended Pascal ISO standard and the
 PP> upcoming standard Object Pascal are *much* better in this regard
 PP> than Borland Pascal, though not quite there yet either. I mostly
 PP> regard Object Pascal (the to-be-a-standard one, not the Borland
 PP> crap) to be a good language without a good compiler.
Truly object oriented or not is a purely objective question, and has
virtually nothing to do with whether a language is particularly good,
bad or indifferent.  Opinions as to the quality of a particular version
of Pascal really don't belong here.
 PP> For more information, check out http://www.gulliver.qc.ca/~pp/crit.txt
 PP> . A very objective (no pun intended) text. Note that much of whats in
 PP> it applies to Object Pascal (again, not the broken Borland one). If it
 PP> would have to be a C derived language, Objective-C would have been a
 PP> much better choice for true objects.
Objective C is a perfectly fine language, but has a large set of
problems of its own.  I'm not going to debate (nor allow others here to
debate) the relative merits of Objective C and C++ (or Eiffel, Sather,
C+@, or the myriad other OO languages based to some degree or other on
C) but I will point out one last time that the question of whether a
language is truly object oriented or not is open to purely objective
answers.  In the cases of each of the languages listed above, there's
absolutely NO question that the answer is YES, it is a true OO language.
That's completely independent of how good the language is.  It's
possible to define a pretty decent object based language that's
definitely NOT object oriented.  It's even possible to define a pretty
decent purely procedural language that bears nearly no resemeblence to
an object oriented language at all.
Finally, there's no question that it's possible to define languages that
are absolutely unusuable, but still really and truly object oriented.
    Later,
    Jerry.
... The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.
--- PPoint 1.90
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