6 ms·

Why was he against object orientation?

by feelix 11y ago

stcredzero 11y ago
My guess: Back at that time, it was harder to afford the extra resources for OO. It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream hands. This is also a big part of the reason why there were languages like Eiffel and also why C++ got so entrenched. Also explains the existence of Objective-C.
- reagency 11y ago
  And indeed, even when Macs had faster hardware (early PowerPC), the Objective-C crippled performance. Windows crashed a lot (like Mac did before OS X), but it was fast because it had no isolation between components.
  - empthought 11y ago
    There was no Objective-C in Apple software in the days of "when Macs had faster hardware (early PowerPC)." The state-of-the art at OS X's release was the fourth-generation PowerPC, and there was only one more major iteration of the PowerPC used in Macs. I would call this "later PowerPC." "Early PowerPC" Macs couldn't run OS X.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      But there was Object Pascal and C++.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > the extra resources for OO Thinking like this annoys me, because it assumes a specific implementation for OO. Are people conflating OO with Java? Are they conflating it with Smalltalk? Are they unaware you can write C in an OO style? > It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream hands. Yes. People are apparently conflating OO with Java or Smalltalk.
  - cynicalkane 11y ago
    The GP is talking about what OO was like back at the time. What the heck are you complaining about? There were very few fast OO languages and they were emerging at the time. The most prominent examples of those languages are those languages GP names, and they do not exactly live up to the promises of even contemporary OO research, much less modern research.
    - asveikau 11y ago
      I share the poster's sentiment. OO is a mental box and a lot of people end up with overly narrow definitions or have trouble escaping the box thinking. You can apply the same ideas without language support. It is orthogonal to bytecodes, VMs, GC or even a "class" keyword. But a lot of people have very specific expectations and will have a hard time seeing this for what it is.
      - collyw 11y ago
        Actually I think this is the beautiful thing about Perl 5's OOP support. It was clearly an after thought and a bit of a hack, but it works, and it makes it transparent how everything works. I had been taught Java at university before that, and the whole OOP thing was a bit of a hidden mystery. Perl gave me a far better understanding of OOP.
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      > What the heck are you complaining about? That mindset. Like I said. Did you not read my post?
      - xigency 11y ago
        We are talking about computing in 1985. A 25 MHz workstation would be at least 10,000% slower than a modern computer, with about 1,000× less memory available. Still, this isn't a huge difference in context, but talking about adding 4 to 16 bytes of overhead on every data structure, or every object, in a worst case scenario could result in twice as much memory usage. Steve Jobs wasn't an engineer technically, so he wouldn't know the specifics here, but at the time object-oriented programming had a stigma associated with it because programmers did know of these drawbacks. Using Objective-C was obviously a fundamental choice by the software engineers. Writing C in an object oriented style is what a lot of programmers did then. But there's a difference between associating data with methods and supporting polymorphism. Hence the talk of virtual function tables.
- jghn 11y ago
  OO was around since he late 60s. The reason it went away has less to do with compute power than people realize
- jghn 11y ago
  OO was around since he late 60s. The reason it went away has less to do with compute power than people realize
- pjmlp 11y ago
  The Mac OS introduced Object Pascal to the world and was later rewritten in a mix of C and C++, so I doubt that was the reason.
secstate 11y ago
Just a guess here, but true object-orientation is really hard to get right. It's not like OS X was going to be built on Smalltalk. And if you're going to half-ass OO with an implementation like structs+functions, you're usually better off sticking with a functional system. This is especially true when it comes to high availability services, like operating systems.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DefinitionsForOo http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DefinitionsForOo Given the above link, I deny there's any single useful definition for OO: It's been defined and redefined over and over again for decades, to the point people can't even agree on what languages are capable of writing software in an OO style.
tacone 11y ago
Probably because of the hype. He was promoting OO and thinking about it as a competitive advantage over the competition. He probably didn't want such "powerful" (?) software to be reused by them.
MrTonyD 11y ago
Steve didn't understand OO at the time. Not in the least. Steve was completely non-technical, and he knew that UNIX was standard and didn't want us putting something new and untested in it. I can't tell you how many times I tried to explain OO concepts to him (lots of us tried, over and over.) So, to him, an OO toolkit was something that would make us too complex for developers looking for an easily understood UNIX system. He told us that he was relying on people's existing understanding of UNIX - that would allow them to adopt our system.
- feelix 11y ago
  There are always casualties when managers make decisions and policies based on things they have absolutely no understanding of. At least programmers were able to do it anyway with this particular case, as Steve had no way of knowing it was happening.

Why was he against object orientation?

by feelix 11y ago

Why was he against object orientation?

My guess: Back at that time, it was harder to afford the extra resources for OO. It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream hands. This is also a big part of the reason why there were languages like Eiffel and also why C++ got so entrenched. Also explains the existence of Objective-C.

reagency 11y ago
And indeed, even when Macs had faster hardware (early PowerPC), the Objective-C crippled performance. Windows crashed a lot (like Mac did before OS X), but it was fast because it had no isolation between components.
- empthought 11y ago
  There was no Objective-C in Apple software in the days of "when Macs had faster hardware (early PowerPC)." The state-of-the art at OS X's release was the fourth-generation PowerPC, and there was only one more major iteration of the PowerPC used in Macs. I would call this "later PowerPC." "Early PowerPC" Macs couldn't run OS X.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    But there was Object Pascal and C++.
cbd1984 11y ago
> the extra resources for OO Thinking like this annoys me, because it assumes a specific implementation for OO. Are people conflating OO with Java? Are they conflating it with Smalltalk? Are they unaware you can write C in an OO style? > It's not until the time I graduated college that machines and VMs of managed environments started to get faster than "embarrassingly slow" in mainstream hands. Yes. People are apparently conflating OO with Java or Smalltalk.
- cynicalkane 11y ago
  The GP is talking about what OO was like back at the time. What the heck are you complaining about? There were very few fast OO languages and they were emerging at the time. The most prominent examples of those languages are those languages GP names, and they do not exactly live up to the promises of even contemporary OO research, much less modern research.
  - asveikau 11y ago
    I share the poster's sentiment. OO is a mental box and a lot of people end up with overly narrow definitions or have trouble escaping the box thinking. You can apply the same ideas without language support. It is orthogonal to bytecodes, VMs, GC or even a "class" keyword. But a lot of people have very specific expectations and will have a hard time seeing this for what it is.
    - collyw 11y ago
      Actually I think this is the beautiful thing about Perl 5's OOP support. It was clearly an after thought and a bit of a hack, but it works, and it makes it transparent how everything works. I had been taught Java at university before that, and the whole OOP thing was a bit of a hidden mystery. Perl gave me a far better understanding of OOP.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    > What the heck are you complaining about? That mindset. Like I said. Did you not read my post?
    - xigency 11y ago
      We are talking about computing in 1985. A 25 MHz workstation would be at least 10,000% slower than a modern computer, with about 1,000× less memory available. Still, this isn't a huge difference in context, but talking about adding 4 to 16 bytes of overhead on every data structure, or every object, in a worst case scenario could result in twice as much memory usage. Steve Jobs wasn't an engineer technically, so he wouldn't know the specifics here, but at the time object-oriented programming had a stigma associated with it because programmers did know of these drawbacks. Using Objective-C was obviously a fundamental choice by the software engineers. Writing C in an object oriented style is what a lot of programmers did then. But there's a difference between associating data with methods and supporting polymorphism. Hence the talk of virtual function tables.
jghn 11y ago
OO was around since he late 60s. The reason it went away has less to do with compute power than people realize
jghn 11y ago
OO was around since he late 60s. The reason it went away has less to do with compute power than people realize
pjmlp 11y ago
The Mac OS introduced Object Pascal to the world and was later rewritten in a mix of C and C++, so I doubt that was the reason.

secstate 11y ago

Just a guess here, but true object-orientation is really hard to get right. It's not like OS X was going to be built on Smalltalk. And if you're going to half-ass OO with an implementation like structs+functions, you're usually better off sticking with a functional system. This is especially true when it comes to high availability services, like operating systems.

cbd1984 11y ago
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DefinitionsForOo http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DefinitionsForOo Given the above link, I deny there's any single useful definition for OO: It's been defined and redefined over and over again for decades, to the point people can't even agree on what languages are capable of writing software in an OO style.

tacone 11y ago

Probably because of the hype. He was promoting OO and thinking about it as a competitive advantage over the competition. He probably didn't want such "powerful" (?) software to be reused by them.

MrTonyD 11y ago

Steve didn't understand OO at the time. Not in the least. Steve was completely non-technical, and he knew that UNIX was standard and didn't want us putting something new and untested in it. I can't tell you how many times I tried to explain OO concepts to him (lots of us tried, over and over.) So, to him, an OO toolkit was something that would make us too complex for developers looking for an easily understood UNIX system. He told us that he was relying on people's existing understanding of UNIX - that would allow them to adopt our system.

feelix 11y ago
There are always casualties when managers make decisions and policies based on things they have absolutely no understanding of. At least programmers were able to do it anyway with this particular case, as Steve had no way of knowing it was happening.