class-oriented rather than object-oriented?

[Michele Simionato]

On May 25, 4:34 am, notnorweg... at yahoo.se wrote:
> i have some confusion over this.
>
> sure a class is basically a classification, like for example an animal
> or flower. and an object/instance of that class is then for example a
> cat.
>
> an object is an instance of a class. that i know, i also know how to
> program with classes etc.
>
> i am just confused about the term object-oriented.
>
> wouldnt class-oriented be more fitting? at least for java since what
> you do is divide everything into classes.

Unfortunately there is a lot of confusion in the terminology.
Basically, everybody uses the term "object oriented" with
a different meaning. So, it is not your fault and yes, a
better name for Java would be class-oriented language.

> in python i dont or at leats not as much.
>
> does object-oriented refer to that everything(strings, ints etc) are
> all objects? so there is a class string somewhere in the
> implementation rather than a primitive or somehing?

Yes, this is the common meaning of the sentence
"everything is an object", in the sense that type(x)
gives you the class of x for any x.

> are python functions objects?

Yes.

>>> def f(x): pass
>>> type(f)
<type 'function'>

> can a functional language be object-oriented or an objectoriented
> language be functional?

Yes and not. A *pure* functional language has no mutation,
whereas the basic tenet of object orientation is having
something with a mutable state. In practice, most functional
languages are not pure, and most object oriented language
also allows functional construct.

> one definition of OO is a language that passes messages between
> objects. but not necessarily that is has to pass message sbetween
> classes?

"Passing a message" is another way of saying "calling a
method". In a language such as Python (or Smalltalk, or
Ruby) classes as objects (in the sense that they are
instances of some class, the so-called metaclass)
so you can "pass a message" to the class.
Notice that the message passing methaphor only works
with languages with single dispatch; the Common Lisp
Object System (CLOS), which is based on multiple
dispatch, goes in an entirely different category
(no message passing there). A generic function system
is not an object system in the traditional sense (I
mean the sense of Smalltalk) so it should have a
different name, but the mistake has been made twenty
years ago and there is nothing we can do now.

     Michele Simionato