[cap-talk] Don't understand capabilities

[Rob J Meijer]

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:

> >
> > Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > > At Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:19:38 -0700,
> > > Jed at Webstart <donnelley1 at webstart.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >>If we haven't adequately conveyed that message so that somebody can
> > >>do "much reading" on the capability concept and still not understand
> > >>it then I think something is seriously wrong with "our" message.
> > >
> > > Mmmh.  I have a gut feeling here.  Capabilities may be difficult to
> > > understand because they are not "natural", in the sense that they are
> > > not a concept that comes out of human experience.
> >
> > They are no more or less so than "objects" in the object-oriented
> > programming sense.
>
> Why do you think so?  Certainly, the human mind has a great capacity
> to identify and abstract objects in the real world.  Furthermore,
> "operating on an object" seems also to be a concept inherent to the
> human mind, as the passive voice shows which is part of our language
> (have to check with a linguist if it is universal, but it's hard to
> imagine exceptions).

But in OO programming you need pointers or references  (or capabilities)
to 'operate' on these objects. Thus you should not look to see if the
concept of 'objects you can operate on' is as natural as 'operating on
objects with capabilities'.
You should look if 'capabilities' are as natural as 'pointers' or
'references'. In my view neither is realy natural, least of all
pointers.