Top all-time · #9890
William Cook
Personal blog · wcook.blogspot.comprogramming
William Cook's personal blog at wcook.blogspot.com covers programming. Since 2009, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “A Proposal for Simplified Definitions of “Object” and “Object Oriented” (2012)”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
William Cook's blog posts on object-oriented programming, including a reply to Paul Graham's claims about objects in Arc and a proposed definition of OOP. HN readers cite them in debates about objects.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A Proposal for Simplified Definitions of “Object” and “Object Oriented” (2012)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-07-11
What Hacker News says?
William Cook's response to Paul Graham's explanation for why Arc isn't especially object-oriented: http://wcook.blogspot.com/2011/04/paul-graham-on-objects-in-...
Comment linking /2011/04/paul-graham-on-objects-in-arc.html
on “Functional Programming Is Hard, That's Why It's Good”Submitted A Proposal for Simplified Definitions of “Object” and “Object Oriented” (2012) as a story · 22 points
HN discussionSad to see. His definition of OOP[1] helped to shape my style of programming. [1] https://wcook.blogspot.com/2012/07/proposal-for-simplified-m...
Comment linking /2012/07/proposal-for-simplified-modern.html
on “William Cook has died”Submitted A Proposal for a Simplified, Modern Definition of "Object" and "Object Oriented" as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou don't. See http://wcook.blogspot.com/2012/07/proposal-for-simplified-mo... by William Cook. However, objects help to tame mutable state.
Comment linking /2012/07/proposal-for-simplified-modern.html
on “Brad Cox: when OOP was about “Software-ICs” and micro-transactions”Submitted A Proposal for Simplified, Modern Definitions of “Object” and “OO” (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWilliam Cook's response to this is worth a read http://wcook.blogspot.com/2011/04/paul-graham-on-objects-in-... "Objects are just collections of first-class functions". " the lambda-calculus was the first object-oriented language: all its data is represented behaviorally as objects"
Comment linking /2011/04/paul-graham-on-objects-in-arc.html?m=1
on “Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented (2002)”Submitted Declarative versus Imperative (2013) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes, I know how CLOS works. It's certainly a powerful approach, but it doesn't strike me as terribly... umm... object-oriented. (0) In CLOS, as you say, methods are requests to the global environment to find the right behavior to perform on a list of arguments. In an object-oriented system, each object has its own behavior, and the rest of the program (that is, the environment) has no business knowing how it interna…
Comment linking /2012/07/proposal-for-simplified-modern.html
on “A late-night rant about OOP and parametric dispatch”Submitted A Proposal for Simplified, Modern Definitions of “Object” and “Object Oriented” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted William Cook (PL researcher and AppleScript designer) on industry and academia as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
