Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!glad From: Anita Manuel Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: The plasticity of the BETA language Date: 1 Feb 1996 18:21:45 GMT Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University Lines: 59 Approved: mailtonews@daimi.aau.dk Distribution: world Message-ID: <4er0bp$i1f@gjallar.daimi.aau.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: daimi.daimi.aau.dk Dear subscribers: I am e-mailing you this message from Anita because indeed I know many applications of object oriented programming in ecological modeling but not in BETA. I am trying to implement my ecodesign model in BETA but I have a powerful domain dependent model that maps onto the BETA syntax perfectly well. Now I am developing my geometric modeling. Since notions such as polymorphism seem central to implement the ecodesign model and geometric modeling in a seamless process I am reading lots of papers about it.Since there is no theory no full-fledged theory about OOP, to read papers is of very little help immediately. How virtual patterns, metaclasses, abstract classes prototypes interact? A paper only cares about one concept and if one does not reflect this concept in the organization of the domain dependent model one soon perceives that the knowledge is not well organized and the coordination will not work. What I think is worse is that these concepts are dealt with in terms of compilers. And indeed for users of other fields this becomes a hurdle. Not only for users of other fields but also for computer scientists, since the comparison between languages necessarily falls in discussion about compilers. And so then any language C, Pascal and so on can match any project... Then I ask, am I and the whole OOP community stupid in reading and writing papers for years for suddenly having to hear that to program in C is OK? I am sure my Brazilian adviser has never read a paper about OOP or even programming in general and he says authoritatively that to program in C is OK| So if the community can help me in seeing a light at the end of the tunnel I will be happy and especially send references about ecological projects being implemented in BETA. Cheers Albertina Lourenci Ph.D. student Faculty of ARchitecture and Urbanism e-mail : Al at vmcisc.cisc.sc.usp.br ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Albertina, Thanks for the posts. I have read most of Madsen, Moller-Perdersen, and Nygaard and BETA does look quite useful. I would appreciate having some exposure to examples of its use however in ecological modeling. Do you know of any descriptions of such models? I am basically working with human social ecologies in small (church) communities informed to some extent by a autopoietic biological model (Stuart Kauffman's) as well as system-oriented learning and self models (in a loose sense) and concept models from cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson). BETA seems to be designed with this conceptuality in mind. My background is as a working programmer using procedures and functions (COBOL, FORTRAN, SAS, etc.) and this is also a very good introduction to object-orientation for me. I think that hearing more about what people are actually doing in modeling ecological rather than only business and industrial systems would be helpful to my being able to pull together the diverse pieces of my thinking. Thanks for anything you might have to offer, Anita Manuel