Website message overhaul

[Jeff Nowakowski]

On 11/19/2011 08:00 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> Since OCaml allows both mutable and immutable state, I stand corrected
> in regards to OCaml. But my point still stands.

What point? This sub-thread was about OCaml.

> For example, Java has been called "multi-paradigm" because it supports
> OOP and Imperative. But there's no getting away from OOP in Java. All
> data structures are Objects. Even arrays are Objects. Hence, OOP in Java
> cannot be considered an alternative paradigm for Java.

Primitives are not objects, and arrays are specialized objects with 
language support. Java also supports procedural programming with static 
methods. It also supports checking reference equality with ==, which is 
not OO at all. If all you wanted to do was treat Java as a procedural 
language, you could. You'd pay an object tax on memory, but other than 
that, the procedural style is very easy to do.

All these OO escape hatches were built into the language intentionally, 
quite unlike Smalltalk. Besides all this, Java is going to be the 
weakest language to pick on for "multi-paradigm". Many other languages 
in today's programming landscape offer more variety.

If you want to argue that D is special, then argue about it's support 
for functional purity. Even Scala doesn't have that. Just don't get into 
the quagmire of saying that Scala isn't multi-paradigm because it isn't 
/really/ functional. And I still say you should avoid the use of 
"multi-paradigm", because it sounds like a stupid buzzword.

EXECUTIVE
Oh, God, yes. We're talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.

MEYER
Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords 
that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I'm accusing you of 
anything like that. I'm fired, aren't I?

MEYERS
Oh, yes.