Re:Why is OOP still so widely spread?
by leafboi on Thursday September 03, 2020 @01:59PM
(#24366735)
OK let's look at reality here. Anything on this earth can be formalized into a mathematical theory. That doesn't mean every formalization is accepted and accredited by academia.
This book has like three reviews on amazon and in general a formal theory doesn't exist. You won't find a formal theory about OOP calculi on wikipedia.
There are thousands of people in academia and of course at least one of them will attempt to formalize OOP. But largely said and done, overall there is no formal theory that is well accepted. Just random arbitrary attempts at formalization.
Re:Why is OOP still so widely spread?
by zozbot234 on Thursday September 03, 2020 @02:08PM
(#24366862)
Cardelli's work is actually quite notable in the academic field of programming languages. And it's far from "random" or "arbitrary" given its constraints. It's a rather elegant exposition of OOP semantics.
Re:Why is OOP still so widely spread?
by leafboi on Thursday September 03, 2020 @03:05PM
(#24367539)
Let me come at it from another angle. I'm a bit too blunt. I'm not saying people discredit his work. It could be beautiful and elegant. I'm saying his work isn't accepted in the mainstream meaning generally people don't know about it, nor do people study it and contribute to the theory.
See Luca Cardelli, A Theory of Objects. I might agree with you that the formal foundations of OOP are far from intuitive or foolproof (which is why everyone cautions you against using, e.g. implementation-inheritance unless you know exactly what you're doing!) but they do exist.