Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

They cited Obj-C, not Smalltalk. Specific people and specific aspects of the design are mentioned, you haven't actually described how it isn't influenced by Obj-C. Which, incidentally, has primitive types, the plain C part can do static type-checking, etc. In any event the claim is the design is influenced by Obj-C not that it is actually just like Obj-C, a distinction you seem to have trouble making.

View on HN

The claim is that interfaces ripped off prototypes. I'd say that interfaces are a lot closer to C++ abstract classes than prototypes. Whatever they claim, here's my test:

Tell a C++ compiler engineer to make language "C++ minus templates and multiple inheritance plus GC" and you'll probably end up very close to Java.

What do you tell an objective-C compiler engineer to get Java? "Start with obc-c and ..."?

Maybe it's convergent independent evolution, but if obc-c is a branch to the left from C and C++ is a branch to the right, then claiming that Java comes from obj-c means Java must have pulled a very hard right early in its development.

"They cited Obj-C, not Smalltalk."

The author also cites Goslings "lots of experience" with Smalltalk.

"In any event the claim is the design is influenced by Obj-C not that it is actually just like Obj-C, a distinction you seem to have trouble making."

The influence is not sufficient to justify that claim any more than Java's garbage collection would justify its designers in describing Java as "Lispy" or "Lisp-like."

"We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy Steele, co-author of the Java spec

Guy Steele apparently measures distance on a log scale. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com