[E-Lang] E FAQ

[Ken Kahn]

> >4.8. Is there a reason that object mobility isn't supported?

MarkM wrote:
>
> If secure object mobility among mutually suspicious hosts were possible,
one
> could do electronic money with no stationary issue/clearinghouse.  You
would
> just make each dollar such a mobile object, and use hosting-transfer to
> represent ownership transfer.  Since no one knows how to do this, and many
> have looked, it would seem that secure mobile objects are impossible.
>
>
I'll agree about the general case, but aren't there many cases where one
would want object mobility to trusted hosts? Either hosts within the same
corporation or organization or ones run by a trusted third parties. My web
sites for example are hosted by third parties that I trust. And I surely
trust the other two computers in my office as much as this one.

The broader question is what should a language support. I would argue it
should support those things that a large enough fraction of the users need,
when providing such support provides greater benefits than if the
functionality were provided by user code. Unless adding such functionality
costs too much in terms of complexity or implementation costs.

Best,

-ken kahn ( www.toontalk.com )

P.S. Object mobility is simple in ToonTalk. An object migrates by giving a
bird a box with a copy of its robots and its box. The bird flies off to a
possibly remote host where a robot puts the incoming robots and box in a
truck and the object is now running on the host where the bird's nest is.