[Edu-sig] Properties use case

[ajsiegel at optonline.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:38 pm
Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Properties use case

> 
> Well, philosophically, I could see where a lot of CS types might have
> a problem with mutable numbers, complex or otherwise.

Are you a CS type? If so, speak directly. 

If not, why do you feel compelled to speak on their behalf.

As an OOP devotee I am surpirsed you find this as much of an issue as you seem to.

My complex number is an old fashioned object.  For my purposes - destroying it and 
recreating another every time a value changes is wasteful, (and cruel ;))

Instead of having my geometric objects of the complex plane *be* complex numbes, 
there is certainly the solution of having a complex number as an attribute of these objects - 
and then I can take more your approach, and at the speed of C, since I would then 
be using the built-in for arithmettic operations.

There remained something unsatisfying to me about that approach.  

Until something blows up about my current approach, I am quite happy with it. 

 And if and when something does blow up, I will know what it is  and will have 
developed some *real* expertise on the problem of mutable complex numbers, beyond 
the fear of distrubing the sleep of some abstract CS type. And will report back in.

At the moment I don't expect that to happen - but my mind is open - as it has been from 
the beginning - to the possbility that I have made a wrong turn here.

Art