Mathematica: Webel: ADT pseudo classes: POLICY: The Abstract Data Types (ADTs) are stateless functional (although inheritance and overrides are supported), with no caching by default (although there is nice optional caching using CreateUUID[] and Once[]).

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Note kind

CONVENTION

POLICY

Policy level

STRICT

Keywords

An ADT "method" function in the Webel recipe for strong types has no state and always returns the same expression given the same input, for any ADTs of the same ADT signature. There is a slight "side door" concerning some necessary use of at least some package scope "globals" for some support resources, but that can be ignored as pedantic for the purposes of the definition here.

Where performance is an issue, the Mathematica Once[] caching mechanism may optionally be used, but is disabled by default.

Mathematica: SUPER TIP: Use CreateUUID[] to trigger recalculation against Once[] to create a flexible optionally caching function!

If you want to try OO with support for state in Mathematica consider trying the (not fully fledged but very useful) user-contributed MTools package for (some) OO in Mathematica.

Relates to

[STUB] TRAIL: Mathematica: The Webel recipe for Abstract Data Type (ADT) pseudo classes with inheritance for the Wolfram Language

Dr Darren of Webel IT Australia makes the case for better object-orientation for Mathematica using pseudo class ADTs without losing the super-functional power of the Wolfram Language

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