Markus Hilmar Hahn wrote:
I have used class programming before. Stata's implementation is a rather simple
one as far as I remember. You get the basic principles of object orientation -
that's it.
Before I started using it, I just read Stata's help text about class
programming. I have to admit however that I had some experience with other
programming languages. A tutorial would have been good at that point, but for me
I cannot see the point in class programming in Stata anymore.
When I am doing data management I am using exclusivly (what I call) Stata's
basic language. When I have to do some more classical programming I am using
Mata. Class programming is set up on top of Stata's language, so for me it is
not useful for doing data management. Class programming is however useful when
you are programming your own graphs.
What I WOULD like however is a class implementation for Mata. You have stucts
but that's not the same...
I suggest that you are reading a basic tutorial about class programming and then
try to implement simple stuff in Stata using the knowledge of the help text /
manual.
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I concur with Markus. I explored Stata's class programming while toying with
programming structural equation models, and in a few other activities, such as
setting up persistent connection definitions to a client-server relational
database management system. Much taken for granted in other class programming
languages (implementing singleton objects is one example that I recall) is not
readily done with Stata's class programming capability. To be fair: as I
understand it, Stata's class programming features are intended for a specific
purpose (implementing graphics) and not as a general-purpose class programming
language.
According to Bill Gould's announcement at last summer's user group meeting in
Chicago, class programming in Mata has moved out of the to-do queue and into
active development.
Joseph Coveney
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