Can a low-level programmer learn OOP?

[Steve Holden]

Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
> Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com>:
> 
>> I'm happy you are proceeding with so little trouble. Without wishing to 
>> confuse you, however, I should point out that this aspect of Python has 
>> very little to do with its object-orientation. There was a language 
>> called Icon, for example, 20 years ago, that used similar semantics but 
>> wasn't at all object-oriented.
> 
> Actually, there was a language called SNOBOL, 40 years ago, that used
> similar semantics, developed by Griswold et al. Its object model was
> remarkably similar to that of Python without classes. And it even had
> dictionaries (called "tables") :-). 
> 
> For an explaination of the concept "variable" in SNOBOL see
> <http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/~mgr/404/burks/language/snobol/catspaw/tutorial/ch1.htm#1.3>
> 
> SNOBOLs powerfull patterns still shine, compared to Pythons clumsy
> regular expressions. I've used the language a lot in the past, first on
> the mainframe (SPITBOL on System/360), later on the PC (Catspaws SNOBOL4
> &SPITBOL). When I switched to Python, it wasn't because of the
> expressiveness of the language, but of the rich library ("batteries
> included") and the IMO elegant syntax, i.e. blocks by identation.
> 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_E._Griswold>
> 
> Icon came later. Griswold developed Icon as a successor to SNOBOL,
> constructing it around the concept of generators and co-expressions. I
> didn't like it.
> 
> 
I liked Icon quite a lot, despite having a large background in SNOBOL 
(my undergrad final-year project was porting the SPITBOL implementation 
to the DECSystem-10). I wrote email parsing software in Icon long before 
anyone was doing it in Python.

It took a little bit more careful planning to get Icon pattern-matching 
structures right, but there was much more explicit control of 
backtracking. I only wish they'd grafted more OO concepts into it, then 
I might never have bothered with Python! Someone did do an OO system 
layered on top of it, but IIRC it was clumsy and rebarbative.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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