5 ms·

> I've seen too many project's that have drunken the cool aid and has resulted in 5-10 level deep inheritance tree's with their own branching logic trying to fi

by llamaz 10y ago

> I've seen too many project's that have drunken the cool aid and has resulted in 5-10 level deep inheritance tree's with their own branching logic trying to fit behavior to a specific taxonomy. I don't think you understand Alan Kay's version of OOP, if you think inheritance is a key part of OOP. I was interested in this stuff during the summer and I wrote up the following question/answer if you're interested on what Alan Kay's version of OOP was: https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/51847/what-is-the-difference-between-abstract-data-types-and-objects/51963#51963 https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/51847/what-is-the-dif... I answered my own question so I might be wrong, but I have put in a reasonable amount of research effort into it.

hackits 10y ago
Not saying its a key part. Im in the camp you better have a damn good reason to use inheritance that composition will suffice. The whole notion that everyone has their own perspective on oop makes it a mute point.
- pkroll 10y ago
  Actually that's "moot point": http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moot-point http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moot-point But yes, the number of variant perspectives on OOP make it a less descriptive term than would be ideal.
  - mercer 10y ago
    Or a cow's opinion! No but seriously, I think both you and hackits make it clear that there's a lot of discussion over what OOP actually is. Which makes me curious: is there any research on the characteristics of OOP as it implemented in practice across languages? I'd be very interested in such research, because it seems to me that what is possible is often not practiced. So, for example, Ruby might be all about 'message passing' as others, and all the tutorials and books I've read indicate, but in practice it might be indistinguishable from just calling methods on objects, or whatever distinguishes message passing from other OOP styles. If no such research exists, how difficult would it be to scan codebases on Github to analyse this? I might be wrong, but it seems like this would be a worthwhile investigation: how do people actually use languages and what is 'OOP' or 'FP' actually like in codebases that claim to be one or the other. Otherwise we're just getting tangled up in definitions and it's all a moo point.
    - hackits 10y ago
      As of a research paper by Kaijanaho, Antti-Juhani (https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698) Since 1960 till 2012, there are only 22 research papers that used empirical evidence with randomised cross over studies for language design. As of which, Class inheritance had 4 randomized controlled experiments. With a collection of other studies. That is mostly of the information I have come across. There is a research paper on Java that looked at how programmers use inheritance. It's a interesting read and its a good source. (https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/16840 https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/16840) I think Google published another paper looking at development time and I believe the result was the biggest time consumer for programmer was dependencies not necessary the programming langue.
      - infinite8s 10y ago
        I'm not sure measuring how programmers use programming languages would help you gauge whether those languages are any good. It's like measuring the way people rode bicycles in 1880 - that would never lead you to invent the car.
    - hackits 10y ago
      > Otherwise we're just getting tangled up in definitions and it's all a moo point. I agree. I would say a lot of things people do in OOP isn't really OOP it's just object modeling principles. You can apply the same principles in a different language without notions of objects/classes (javascript) comes to mind.
hackits 10y ago
I read your essay on programming languages. I found it was awesome btw. I saw you made the comment `o be concrete - object oriented programming is easy in python, because it's possible to program methods of an object in a way that doesn't assume a particular representation.` I thought you would be really interested in usage of polymorphism in python (http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in-python.html http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in-pyth...). Quote from the article: `Our findings show that the receiver in 97.4% of all call-sites in the average program can be described by a single static type`. It looks like even when that restriction is removed it doesn't really help that much. Another great podcast on evidence based programming: https://www.functionalgeekery.com/episode-55-andreas-stefik/ https://www.functionalgeekery.com/episode-55-andreas-stefik/ Evidence-based programming language design : a philosophical and methodological exploration: https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 Is another great read if you've got the time.
- llamaz 10y ago
  Thanks for the links :) I've saved them and hope to eventually make my way through them

by llamaz 10y ago

hackits 10y ago

Not saying its a key part. Im in the camp you better have a damn good reason to use inheritance that composition will suffice. The whole notion that everyone has their own perspective on oop makes it a mute point.

pkroll 10y ago
Actually that's "moot point": http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moot-point http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moot-point But yes, the number of variant perspectives on OOP make it a less descriptive term than would be ideal.
- mercer 10y ago
  Or a cow's opinion! No but seriously, I think both you and hackits make it clear that there's a lot of discussion over what OOP actually is. Which makes me curious: is there any research on the characteristics of OOP as it implemented in practice across languages? I'd be very interested in such research, because it seems to me that what is possible is often not practiced. So, for example, Ruby might be all about 'message passing' as others, and all the tutorials and books I've read indicate, but in practice it might be indistinguishable from just calling methods on objects, or whatever distinguishes message passing from other OOP styles. If no such research exists, how difficult would it be to scan codebases on Github to analyse this? I might be wrong, but it seems like this would be a worthwhile investigation: how do people actually use languages and what is 'OOP' or 'FP' actually like in codebases that claim to be one or the other. Otherwise we're just getting tangled up in definitions and it's all a moo point.
  - hackits 10y ago
    As of a research paper by Kaijanaho, Antti-Juhani (https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698) Since 1960 till 2012, there are only 22 research papers that used empirical evidence with randomised cross over studies for language design. As of which, Class inheritance had 4 randomized controlled experiments. With a collection of other studies. That is mostly of the information I have come across. There is a research paper on Java that looked at how programmers use inheritance. It's a interesting read and its a good source. (https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/16840 https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/16840) I think Google published another paper looking at development time and I believe the result was the biggest time consumer for programmer was dependencies not necessary the programming langue.
    - infinite8s 10y ago
      I'm not sure measuring how programmers use programming languages would help you gauge whether those languages are any good. It's like measuring the way people rode bicycles in 1880 - that would never lead you to invent the car.
  - hackits 10y ago
    > Otherwise we're just getting tangled up in definitions and it's all a moo point. I agree. I would say a lot of things people do in OOP isn't really OOP it's just object modeling principles. You can apply the same principles in a different language without notions of objects/classes (javascript) comes to mind.

hackits 10y ago

I read your essay on programming languages. I found it was awesome btw. I saw you made the comment `o be concrete - object oriented programming is easy in python, because it's possible to program methods of an object in a way that doesn't assume a particular representation.` I thought you would be really interested in usage of polymorphism in python (http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in-python.html http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in-pyth...). Quote from the article: `Our findings show that the receiver in 97.4% of all call-sites in the average program can be described by a single static type`. It looks like even when that restriction is removed it doesn't really help that much. Another great podcast on evidence based programming: https://www.functionalgeekery.com/episode-55-andreas-stefik/ https://www.functionalgeekery.com/episode-55-andreas-stefik/ Evidence-based programming language design : a philosophical and methodological exploration: https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698 Is another great read if you've got the time.

llamaz 10y ago
Thanks for the links :) I've saved them and hope to eventually make my way through them