Split Capabilities: Making Capabilities Scale

[Eric Messick]

I have an observation about some of the discussion so far here.

The choice of "von Braun" as the holder of various facets may be
encouraging some anthropomorphism which isn't appropriate.  It's not
clear to me that everyone is agreeing on who or what is doing the
"reasoning" in the example.

To me, reasoning is being performed by the programmer, who has
knowledge of the contracts of the various objects/facets being
employed.  I'm considering "von Braun" to be an object, rather than a
programmer.  That object doesn't have knowledge of anything beyond the
facets it's been given, and cannot "reason" about that information in
any way.

So: "von Braun" doesn't know about the possibility of an increment
operation, since it doesn't have the increment facet; the person who
programmed "von Braun" *does* know about the existence of the
increment operation and has coded "von Braun" appropriately (what ever
that might mean).

Hopefully I've improved the clarity of the discussion here...

-eric