The Laws of "object" programming

[Paddy Nixon <Paddy.Nixon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

One of the current limitations of distributed object programming models is the 
lack of "reasoning" models available. In particular, there are loads of Java 
based programming tools out there now (Concordia, Aglets, Voyager, Odyssey 
agents, JavaBeans) which facilitate distributed programming - but none of 
these give you any "framework" within which to reason about your programs, 
their behaviour and their correctness. They are essentially engineering 
solutions.

I have been working  over the past three weeks with Mani Chandy in Caltech 
talking about these issues and I feel the the "java-threads" and CSP channels 
model gives the object community a sound model upon which they can add some 
reasoning rules. There are two distrinct sets of rules I am interested in: 
firstly, the rules which facilitate reasoning and equivalence statements; and 
secondly, classic structures, or patterns to use the OO communities phrase,  
used to solve problems.

I am going to draft over the next few weeks some ideas about translating some 
of "the rules of occam programing" into "the rules of object programming". Now 
some of these may be intracable because of semantic incongruencies, but I have 
an intuituve feeling that many of them will readily translate.

I would be interested in everyone's feelings about this approach,salient 
technical insights, and even suggestions. If anyone wants to talk a little 
more about this, just drop me a mail!

Best regards

Paddy