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This is the short rationale behind the TOM programming language. Very much like Objective-C, TOM is a combination of Smalltalk and C - with Multiple inheritance, DbC, Reflection, Conditions (Exceptions), Code Blocks and GC.
Supporting the Evolution of Software is a longer dissertation on the subject and is worth a read for those interested in the development of OO programming languages.
The main goal of the authors is to obtain unplanned reuse of code with extensibility provided at compile, link and run time. The guiding philosophy is that the writer of a superclass can in no way direct or restrict the possibilities of the writer of the subclass. Specifically, it must be possible to add state & behavior to classes defined in past code.
As interesting as the perspective provided by the material is, I've still not been able to completely get TOM to compile on my system. Still a bit too involved in the make process, though I got a lot further this time than I did 6 months ago. Hoping that they build some binary RPM distributions to make my life easier.
Posted to OOP by Chris Rathman on 5/21/01; 12:43:51 AM
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On the Flexibility of Programming Languages
