Python Macros

[Josiah Carlson]

> > "Messages" in ObjC are really just a metaphor, one that is shared by
> > Smalltalk, but not many other object-oriented languages.
> 
> _Most_ object-oriented languages support object orientation via the
> message passing paradigm. Python included.
> 
> It's just that in Smalltalk the word "message" plays a more central
> role in the (natural) language used to talk about the (programming)
> language. In other (programming) languages, terms such as "method" and
> "member function" tend to be used to describe the same concept.

Think of it like this:

There is object-oriented message passing (using message passing to
handle object orientation), which is what ObjC and Smalltalk use as
paradigms to describe how they work.

Then there is the asynchronous message passing, which involves queues
of messages that are polled, etc.


If your language has a stack datatype, it has a queue datatype.  If it
has these, it can do asynchronous message passing.

On the other hand, no one in the Python world really describes
instance.method() as passing a message to 'instance' with the value of
'method'.

 - Josiah