What is the semantics meaning of 'object'?

[Mark Janssen]

>> Here's how it *should* be made:  the most superest, most badassed
>> object should take care of its children.  New instances should
>> automatically call up the super chain (and not leave it up to the
>> subclasses), so that the parent classes can take care of the chil'en.
>>  When something goes wrong the parent class has to look in and see
>> what's wrong.
>
> So what you're saying is that the first class defined does everything,
> and subclasses _restrict_ what can be done? I disagree strongly:

That's right.  Just as the *machine* restricts what can be done.  It's
an upturning of the purity model and going back to practicality.

> 1) That breaks the Liskov Substitution Principle. A subclass of list
> ought to fulfill the contracts of a basic list.

We don't need LSP.  I write about this on the WIkiWikiWeb where there
were many arguments documented and many hairs frazzled.  LSP was
derived from AlanKay's abstract idea of "Everything is an object".
But no -- there is a *physics* for information, and it ends at the
machine types.

> 2) It implies that someone can invent an all-encompassing superclass
> before any subclassing is done.

No, we start with basic types and work upwards.  The
"all-encompassing" superclass it an all-encompassing data object:  in
mathematics, it's called a SET -- and mathematics has already done the
work to prove that it's the most generic and all-encompassing, a field
of SET THEORY.

> This kinda violates the laws of
> information. Programmers, being creative entities, will be adding to
> the pool of knowledge. Trying to shoehorn everything into one object
> won't work.

No, we don't need programmers adding to the "pool of knowledge" -- the
internet does that.  We need programmers making data objects that can
present data in new and more interesting ways -- starting from basic
principles.

-- 
MarkJ
Tacoma, Washington