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Advanced OOP: Declarative Programming and Mini-Languages Publish Date: Jul. 31, 2003
While much of the "popular" programming world describes problems in terms of how to solve them, declarative programming describes problems in terms of what's known about them. David Mertz explores existing declarative languages and gives examples of declarative programming in Python.
Privacy and Anonymity in Email Publish Date: Jun. 12, 2003
Email has been described as a postcard. Sure, it's rude to read someone else's mail, but it's trivial to do. There exist many technical means to protect your privacy and to help you communicate anonymously. David Mertz explores the history and current state of email protection.
Advanced OOP: Multimethods Publish Date: May. 29, 2003
Most popular object oriented languages take their method dispatch styles from Smalltalk's message passing style, dispatching based on the invocant. Another approach is multiple dispatch or multimethods, which considers multiple invocants for dispatch. Why is this important? David Mertz explains how multimethods improve polymorphism and often provide a better alternative to inheritance.
A Primer on Python Metaclass Programming Publish Date: Apr. 17, 2003
Classes and objects are simple, right? Once you really get it, isn't that all there is? Well, no--there's a whole class of advanced object-oriented techniques to make your code simpler, stronger, and more elegant. This week, David Mertz explains metaclasses--the building blocks of classes. Though the examples are in Python, the ideas translate to many other languages.
