[cap-talk] Composability and RAII

[David Barbour]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Rob Meijer <capibara at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> I think we need to face the simple fact, the 'eternal objects' abstraction
> was a mistake.

I would agree that resources should not be associated with
non-volatile objects. I came to a similar conclusion from a different
direction: orthogonal persistence needs the ability to restore
activities (sound, video, UI, server and p2p connections). But,
whereas you conclude that 'eternal objects' are the mistake, my
conclusion was that 'naked message passing' is the mistake - that a
more connection-oriented design is superior. Connections give us
semi-volatile objects with which we can associate resources and other
connections.

>
> C++/RAII shows that all types of resources can be properly encapsulated
> and can keep polymorphism intact.

David-Sarah's def. of resource was incomplete (only covered
conservative resources). C++/RAII doesn't help with time and energy
and a number of other resources...