(ref.doc)JOOP 6/2

June 93, Volume 6, No. 2

Abstraction descant, part 2
Critic-at-large
by Richard P. Gabriel Note:
 Gabriel
p 14-18
- references to Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
- new concepts for software development:
  - compression
  - habitability
  - piecemeal growth
- "In programming, if there is a large set of abstractions that do
  nearly the right thing, the temptation is to use those abstractions
  and to bend the structure of the surrounding program to fit those
  abstractions. This can lead to uninhabitable programs.
  Worse: you can fight the temptation to use them and choose to *not*
  use them. This choice also can lead to uninhabitable programs
  because you are using parts similar but subtly different from
  possibly familiar ones. The only way to avoid the whole problem is
  to use small blocks rather than large ones. Or, to use blocks
  Well-designed and tested by experts."


EPEE: An Eiffel environment to program distributed memory parallel
computers,
by J.-M. Jezequel
p 48-54
Stresses on scalability with "sequential-like" interfaces to the user.
Solution based on "data-distribution"
Explanations non convincing (maybe not well-understood?), although
scalability figures impressive.


Toward an object-oriented curriculum
Education & Training
by Bertrand Meyer
p 76-81
Eiffel as the successor of Pascal for education purposes.
Critics on the C++ notation:
  "With this kind of notation, it is impossible to teach the
  concepts."


Iterators and use counts
C++
by Andrew Koenig
p 82-84
Keywords: use counts, smart pointers, reference counting
- Code example implementing this:
  "Make it possible to reallocate an Array without invalidating all
  the Pointers that 'point' into it".
- "The fundamental theorem of software engineering:
  All problems can be solved by introducing an extra level of
  indirection"


Object-oriented Design for C++
Book Review, by Steven C. Bilow
(book by Tsvi Bar-David)
Very positive review.