An object is an instance (or not)?

[Rustom Mody]

On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 7:55:12 AM UTC+5:30, Ned Batchelder wrote:
> On 1/27/15 7:17 PM, Mario Figueiredo wrote:
> > Ned Batchelder says...
> >>
> >> A common mistake is to believe that "OOP" is a well-defined term.  It's
> >> not it's a collection of ideas that are expressed slightly differently
> >> in each language.
> >
> > A common mistake is thinking just because OOP has different
> > implementations, it doesn't have a cohesive set of well described rules
> > and its own well defined terminology.
> 
> I know you think that it has well described rules and terminology.  But 
> take a look at this discussion, and maybe realize that the terms are not 
> as well-defined, or certainly not as widely accepted as you think.

I'd go a step or two further than that.

Here's a discussion almost isomorphic [including Ned's futile attempts at
inducing sanity] to this one from a few years ago
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.python/y6mnzDeEsRU/Wvpo4mJ-a2gJ
[And others by that same OP - Mark Janssen - zipher]¹

And there's the recent one (2 because of thread breaking) on
<<Comparisons and sorting of a numeric class>>

To me all these suggest that OOP as a philosophy pickles the brain.
And violently passionate adherence to the philosophy conduces to madness.

[Reminded of a quote I saw on the scheme mailing list:
OOP is the phlogiston theory of CS
]

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¹ To those who suffer violent allergic reactions on seeing ...groups.google... the numbering of the official archive is so fluid that even
google (search engine!) is getting confused and pointing to broken links