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Message Passing

Stefan Tilkov,

Dare Obsanjo writes about James Robertson’s comments on SOA vs. Distributed Objects:

It is just an unfortunate naming collision that some object oriented languages use the term ‘message passing’ to describe invoking methods on objects which I’m sure is what’s confused James Robertson given that he is a Smalltalk fan.

While I agree with almost everything written by Dare here, I have one issue: I’m by no means a Smalltalk expert, but AFAIK, there is some conceptual difference in this regard between different types of OO languages. One of the coolest features of Smalltalk seems to be the doesNotUnderstand message. In fact, my respect for Smalltalk was renewed by one of Dare’s colleagues.