Subject: Re: CCL:James Stewart's article

From: Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 23:38:38 +0100

> Now,  I sense that the chemistry sector has the opportunity to
> move into stage 3 of this evolutionary process, which could be
> summed up by the description "chemistry objects". Whilst
> object oriented chemistry programming has been seen in
> many incarnations, the most recent advent of technologies such
> as  Java and most importantly  CORBA (common object
> request brokering architectures) and its Internet implementation
> suggests that this time it should succeed.

CORBA provides the technical basis that would *allow* a useful
object-based programming approach on a large scale, but it doesn't
mean that it has to happen. Some interface standards will also be
necessary, and I don't see who would be able to define them and
influential enough to make them accepted. And then there is the problem
that at least among research scientists (who do provide a lot of
important computer code), object-oriented programming is still largely
unknown.

> SAME objects!  For example, there are about 15-20 molecule
> rendering "applets" written in Java, and yet there is no
> common object architecture between them at present.

Exactly. And then Java is unsuitable for many problems in
chemistry (as is any other single language), so we need more than
simply Java conventions.

> Which brings me to what role a "QCPE" might have in
> this new era. It might have to be a more pro-active one,
> in maintaining the chemical object namespace to go
> with CORBA (think of CORBA as an object equivalent

I must confess knowing next to nothing about QCPE (i.e. who backs it
and how it is organized), but of course it would be nice if it could fulfill
that role.

-- 
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Konrad Hinsen                          | E-Mail: [email-masked]
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