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I mostly use a procedural style (i.e. C like) in java, for working out new ideas in solo projects. It's simpler, more flexible, less verbose and easier to foll

I mostly use a procedural style (i.e. C like) in java, for working out new ideas in solo projects. It's simpler, more flexible, less verbose and easier to follow than a full-on OO style. A great example is the early calculatoe e.g. in ed 2 vs 3 of the compiler "Dragon" book: older uses C, later uses OO java... and it's so much worse. However, OO is great for wrapping up modules of functionality for which you've understood and settled on an informed architecture (or you just need to sweep repetitive boilerplate away). I think inheritance is just about completely useless (but not quite completely), and (java) interfaces are great - if you have more than one implementation. Big, multi-person projects are a different story. I don't use much fp-style, except where recursion is natural (e.g. parser combinators); or for plug-in functions (hardly fp though).

morbidhawk 9y ago
I was writing a small but semi algorithm-heavy library in C# that didn't rely much on other libraries. I later decided to port it to Java and realized that the more C#-like I had written the original code the harder it was to port. Later when trying to port it to JavaScript I ended up re-writing the C#/Java code to rely less on the standard libraries since each standard library differed so much. At that point my code started to look very procedural in the OO languages possibly similar to what you've been doing in Java. I came to the realization I didn't even need a lot of the language features for what I was doing and decided to switch it to C to not have to maintain various versions of the library and it was a steep learning curve but I've come to really enjoy the simplicity but powerful capabilities of C.
- le-mark 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, it's a great, succinct example of the journey many experience. You could flesh this out and post it on medium or something to get the ideas out there for discussion.

morbidhawk 9y ago

I was writing a small but semi algorithm-heavy library in C# that didn't rely much on other libraries. I later decided to port it to Java and realized that the more C#-like I had written the original code the harder it was to port. Later when trying to port it to JavaScript I ended up re-writing the C#/Java code to rely less on the standard libraries since each standard library differed so much. At that point my code started to look very procedural in the OO languages possibly similar to what you've been doing in Java. I came to the realization I didn't even need a lot of the language features for what I was doing and decided to switch it to C to not have to maintain various versions of the library and it was a steep learning curve but I've come to really enjoy the simplicity but powerful capabilities of C.

le-mark 9y ago
Thanks for sharing this, it's a great, succinct example of the journey many experience. You could flesh this out and post it on medium or something to get the ideas out there for discussion.