I need a message-goto object language

[Derek L. VerLee]

Hello, I just subscribed.  I was planning to lurk-and-learn, but low
and behold the first message I get and I have something to say :)

Perhaps my confusion lies in what you call the "true programing language".
But perhaps most languages imply that the message will return a value
eventually because they have found it is of no advantage not to.  IOW,
maybe its just bad technique, or a bad idea in general, so why worry about
incorperating it into a language?  (in c/c++, the languages that I am
most familier with, you can tell the compiler that a function may never
return by declaring it volatile, I think).

The general vibe that I have allways picked up on is that functional
programing is superior.  Then again, maybe It would be usefull for
something, and I dont know what I'm talking about.  

-Moebious
                            \  /
                        -----><-----  (do you really believe this?)
                            /  \


On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Paul Dufresne wrote:

> Hi, I'd like to share a problem I am having. This is not directly about
> Tunes, but I guess it is better
> to post here than on OS-Ideas since the traffic is so low by now, that
> it will just wake you up.
> 
> I use to be a bad programmer that directly go and program on the
> computer rather than thinking on paper
> before going on the computer. But this time, I decided to spend some
> times on paper. I usually avoid flowcharts prefering to use pseudo-code.
> 
> Flowcharts ('ordinogramme' in french) often give some nice paper results
> that is not so easy to
> transform in while and for without using any goto. The obvious way to
> program this kind of flowchart is to
> just not doing any while, repeat or for and just use ifs and gotos. But
> this time, I began writing some
> kind of flowchart. Not exactly traditional one. I just make some kind of
> data-flow diagram. Each box
> have some inputs arrows (in my mind incoming messages), and output
> arrows (outgoing messages).
> In my mind, arrows was the data-flow of the program, so data-flow can
> enter by any arrows, and must
> get out by one outgoing arrows. Inside a box, there are others boxes.
> Well, on paper it does not look too
> much spaghetti, like we use to call this kind of goto-message
> programming, because the program is
> structured in a systemic way (boxs in boxs).
> 
> But now it seems hard to program in a true programming language, because
> normally, calling a method
> suppose that the data-flow will come back, and I did not make this
> assertion in doing my flowcharts.
> To allow a return value, I just create an other ingoing arrow at my box,
> and the box I send a message can
> send a value to the previously mentionned ingoing arrow, but it is not
> mandatory like in all programming
> languages I seems to know. How am I suppose to transform my flowchart to
> program it. Or maybe I would
> have to create a new object-oriented language that do message-goto
> rather than message-calling.n :-)
> 
> I hope I made myself clear enough to be understood.
> 
> --Paul Dufresne
> 
>