[E-Lang] Re: inheritance, delegation, mental models for beginners (was: down with `define' (was: newbie syntax: picayune points from a prejudiced programmer))

[Marc Stiegler]

> 1.  MarkS's "give them what they want and also give them something
> better".
>
> 2.  Say "we don't have inheritance, but we have delegation which is
> better".
>
> 3.  Say "we have inheritance, but you have to use a funny-looking
> 'functional programming' technique to use it".  (Or perhaps: "..., but
> you have to use a funny-looking bit of syntax which means nothing to
> you to use it.")

Actually, I think it will be halfway between 1 and 3, which is not 2 :-)

I have not looked hard at markm's example of inheritance without the "class"
keyword, but I suspect in the end there will be some flavor of that as the
example in the book.

More important to me than inheritance at this point is the beginner mental
model of classes/makers. We seem to be out of solutions for that at the
moment :-)


--marcs