[plt-dev] IDE and completion

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Matthias Felleisen
<matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> 1. syntax: OOP guys write down the first argument first (this) and then the method call and that is the way syntax works.

Yes, but they give up the ability to have first-class methods.  The
method name is selected
from the scope of the object, not from the lexical environment.  There
is no way to write

applyToAutomobile (Method action) {
    return myAutomobile.action();
}

(of course you could use reflection, heh heh)

In addition, there's a level of kludginess that they put up with in
order to bootstrap
themselves into the object world. (No first-class constructor methods,
so `factories'
have to be introduced.)  In FP, given an arbitrary variable like
`aList', there are a million
constructor functions that could operate on it:  cons, list, make-foo,
alist->hash-table,
etc.  If first-class functions were eliminated from functional
programming, it would be
pretty easy to auto-complete, too.

>
> Is it really hopeless for us? -- Matthias

Yeah.  We're saddled with a language that permits us to name nearly anything.
Perhaps we need a less powerful paradigm.

-- 
~jrm