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From: daemon@cornell.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Gotos in programming languages
Message-ID: <243@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-May-84 19:54:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.243
Posted: Wed May 30 19:54:17 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Jun-84 00:16:54 EDT
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Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 33

From: Pavel.pa@XEROX.ARPA
Nessus, 

In reference to your `brash statement', ``If in an introductory
programming course, you teach anything other than an object oriented
programming language, such as Lisp, CLU, or Smalltalk (sorry folks,
Pascal does not count), you are brain-damaging your students almost as
much as if you taught them Basic,'' I must admit to being completely in
the dark as to your definition of `object oriented'.  If it means the
late-binding of procedures on the basis of the type of one or more of
their arguments, then neither CLU nor LISP (in general, unless you were
referring to Flavors) support this style.  If you just mean an ability
to cluster the operations of an abstract type into a black box, then
Smalltalk and CLU get in, but LISP still remains in the cold.

I personally favor the first definition, but don't see how CLU gets in
there at all (by LISP I'll assume you mean the Flavors-enhanced
variety).  Could you please explain?

Also, I would be very interested in a more complete description of your
views regarding this `brain-damage' you speak of.  Two major questions
come to mind immediately: What bad habits and wrong thinking are being
forced onto these students by non-object-oriented languages and what are
the important attributes of the languages that fit your definition of
object-oriented that prevent this damage?  I have my own answers to
these questions but would be interested in seeing yours.

	Pavel Curtis
	Computer Science Laboratory
	Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
	
	decvax!cornell!pavel
	Pavel.pa@Xerox.ARPA