Re: Big diatribe on protocols & classes (was Re: Can a Swarm instancebe treated like a SwarmObject instance?

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "PJ" == Paul E Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

PJ> Your note above says this is "not good" because the behavior is "not
PJ> specified." But, since Swarm.h is subclassed from classes that
PJ> implement drop, then [someSwarm drop] is a specified behavior.

Classes are an implementation technique for the Objective C
implementation of the Swarm interfaces.  In the Java version of Swarm,
for example, there is not a hierarchy of Java classes at all.  The
classes the Java programmer interacts with are just containers that
map in different sets of native methods, and the native methods that
are mapped in are determined from the protocol files.  If the Swarm
protocol (in our current sources) still failed to adopt any protocols,
it would not have the methods it should in Java land.

So "specified" behavior is what we claim as our intent.  Other things
that happen to work but are not claimed as our intent may go away or
change arbitrarily, as in the Java example.



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