[Grace-core] Today's discussion

[Kim Bruce]

I suggest that we talk about the following issues:

1.  Andrew's examples of how to do class-based inheritance to get the same effects as Smalltalk/Java.  I couldn't see how they worked and they didn't run for me.

2.  Discuss whether we could convince instructors that the object-based inheritance semantics is an improvement over what they are used to in the commonly used OO languages in intro courses:  Java/C++/C#, Eiffel, Python, Smalltalk.  (... and students will need to transfer over to when they shift to one of those languages.)  I suspect there aren't many intro courses using Javascript.

One of my main concerns with the object-based inheritance is that it seems to block setting up simple frameworks for students to use.  That is, one can get around (most of) the limitations by sending initialize methods after creating an object, but that means that incomplete or incorrect (not satisfying invariants) objects are floating around for a while before they are initialized, and that student must remember to make the extra step of initializing them. 

3.  Discuss the structure of my first draft of the SIGCSE paper.

4.  Finish up Onward paper?

other items?

Kim