On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, Thomas Grill wrote:
my vote is for object, although it's technically incorrect. Thinking of my course next semester, i guess i would have a hard time explaining the class/object difference to the students, most of who have no programming experience at all.
It's a concept that they already know since they are very little. Many nouns refer to something that there can be many instances of and of which the noun acts as a class. Thus saying "the cat" refers to an individual, "the cats" refers to several individuals, "cats" (alone) refers to cats in general (class), and so does "all cats" and in another way "any cat" also does.
There must be a way to leverage that kind of intuition or knowledge.
I tend to think that for pd this differentiation is not really an issue outside external programming (which isn't targetted in this discussion).
do you teach abstractions? how do you do that without saying "class"? probably using a word that stands for "class".
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada