Prototypes with Multiple Dispatch: An Expressive and Dynamic Object Model

Two object-oriented programming language paradigms— dynamic, prototype-based languages and multi-method languages— provide orthogonal benefits to software engineers. These two paradigms appear to be in conflict, however, preventing engineers from realizing the benefits of both technologies in one system. This paper introduces a novel object model, prototypes with multiple dispatch (PMD), which seamlessly unifies these two approaches. We give formal semantics for PMD, and discuss implementation and experience with PMD in the dynamically typed programming language Slate. 1 Overview We begin the paper by describing a motivating example that shows the limitations of current, popular object-oriented languages for capturing how method behavior depends on the interaction between objects and their state. The example shows that multi-methods can cleanly capture how behavior depends on the interaction between objects, while dynamic, prototype-based languages can cleanly capture how behav...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ECOOP
• Authors: Lee Salzman, Jonathan Aldrich
• Keywords: ECOOP 2005, Programming Languages