"Closures are poor man's objects and vice versa" - What does this mean?

Closures are poor man's objects and vice versa.

I have seen this statement at many places on the web (including SO) but I don't quite understand what it means. Could someone please explain what it exactly means?

If possible, please include examples in your answer.

Solution 1:

Objects are poor man's closures.

Consider Java. Java is an object-oriented programming language with no language level support for real lexical closures. As a work-around Java programmers use anonymous inner classes that can close over the variables available in lexical scope (provided they're final). In this sense, objects are poor man's closures.

Closures are poor man's objects.

Consider Haskell. Haskell is a functional language with no language level support for real objects. However they can be modeled using closures, as described in this excellent paper by Oleg Kiselyov and Ralf Lammel. In this sense, closures are poor man's objects.

If you come from an OO background, you'll probably find thinking in terms of objects more natural, and may therefore think of them as a more fundamental concept than closures. If you come from a FP background, you might find thinking in terms of closures more natural, and may therefore think of them as a more fundamental concept than objects.

Moral of the story is that closures and objects are ideas that are expressible in terms of each other, and none is more fundamental than the other. That's all there is to the statement under consideration.

In philosophy, this is referred to as model dependent realism.

Solution 2:

The point is that closures and objects accomplish the same goal: encapsulation of data and/or functionality in a single, logical unit.

For example, you might make a Python class that represents a dog like this:

class Dog(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.breed = "Beagle"
        self.height = 12
        self.weight = 15
        self.age = 1
    def feed(self, amount):
        self.weight += amount / 5.0
    def grow(self):
        self.weight += 2
        self.height += .25
    def bark(self):
        print "Bark!"

And then I instantiate the class as an object

>>> Shaggy = Dog()

The Shaggy object has data and functionality built in. When I call Shaggy.feed(5), he gains a pound. That pound is stored in variable that's stored as an attribute of the object, which more or less means that it's in the objects internal scope.

If I was coding some Javascript, I'd do something similar:

var Shaggy = function() {
    var breed = "Beagle";
    var height = 12;
    var weight = 15;
    var age = 1;
    return {
        feed : function(){
            weight += amount / 5.0;
        },
        grow : function(){
            weight += 2;
            height += .25;
        },
        bark : function(){
            window.alert("Bark!");
        },
        stats : function(){
            window.alert(breed "," height "," weight "," age);
        }
    }
}();

Here, instead of creating a scope within an object, I've created a scope within a function and then called that function. The function returns a JavaScript object composed of some functions. Because those functions access data that was allocated in the local scope, the memory isn't reclaimed, allowing you to continue to use them through the interface provided by the closure.