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"Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always t

"Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years as it is today." As Apple and other companies have demonstrated, OO libraries and frameworks are also a useful way to promote a hardware platform by facilitating the adoption of proprietary languages and code by third-party application software developers.

insertnickname 7y ago
What does that have to do with OO? Is there something unique about OO that makes it superior for "facilitating the adoption of proprietary languages and code by third-party application software developers"?
- mwfunk 7y ago
  I think they were just railing against the notion of self-contained libraries and frameworks that are capable of being used by developers in binary form. I'm guessing a hobbyist who cares infinitely more about maximizing their own mental stimulation than about creating things and solving problems for other people on a professional basis. Nothing wrong with pure hobbyists, it just leads to weird conversations where different people clearly value different things for unspoken reasons, then get into unusually polarized arguments about engineering practices until everyone realizes that some people are talking about fun stuff they mess around with between classes, and other people are trying to figure out how to solve an immediate problem for an employer who's already given them a bunch of money in exchange for solving problems. Those are two very different conversations.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
CharlesW 7y ago
> …OO libraries and frameworks are also a useful way to promote a hardware platform… In my experience, that causality is backwards. Apple built a device that became insanely popular, and developers did whatever they needed to (e.g. learn Objective-C and UIKit) in order to be there. The particulars of the implementation almost don't matter, although of course Apple cares about the developer experience.
skybrian 7y ago
Graham disparages it as not being useful to "good programmers", but it seems like being able to build by accretion is useful to everyone. It means (ideally) you can build things in any order and the result would be the same. That flexibility seems pretty valuable. Painting yourself into a corner and having to do a redesign (or worse, a rewrite) isn't a good thing. Being able to build by accretion means you get a thriving community of library maintainers with lots of packages available, and hopefully less churn.
melling 7y ago
Objective C was always open source. I guess Swift counts as proprietary because it’s controlled by Apple, even though it’s open source? There’s a possibility that it might become a more widely used language if the community helps add the missing pieces.

insertnickname 7y ago

What does that have to do with OO? Is there something unique about OO that makes it superior for "facilitating the adoption of proprietary languages and code by third-party application software developers"?

mwfunk 7y ago
I think they were just railing against the notion of self-contained libraries and frameworks that are capable of being used by developers in binary form. I'm guessing a hobbyist who cares infinitely more about maximizing their own mental stimulation than about creating things and solving problems for other people on a professional basis. Nothing wrong with pure hobbyists, it just leads to weird conversations where different people clearly value different things for unspoken reasons, then get into unusually polarized arguments about engineering practices until everyone realizes that some people are talking about fun stuff they mess around with between classes, and other people are trying to figure out how to solve an immediate problem for an employer who's already given them a bunch of money in exchange for solving problems. Those are two very different conversations.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

CharlesW 7y ago

> …OO libraries and frameworks are also a useful way to promote a hardware platform… In my experience, that causality is backwards. Apple built a device that became insanely popular, and developers did whatever they needed to (e.g. learn Objective-C and UIKit) in order to be there. The particulars of the implementation almost don't matter, although of course Apple cares about the developer experience.

skybrian 7y ago

Graham disparages it as not being useful to "good programmers", but it seems like being able to build by accretion is useful to everyone. It means (ideally) you can build things in any order and the result would be the same. That flexibility seems pretty valuable. Painting yourself into a corner and having to do a redesign (or worse, a rewrite) isn't a good thing. Being able to build by accretion means you get a thriving community of library maintainers with lots of packages available, and hopefully less churn.

melling 7y ago

Objective C was always open source. I guess Swift counts as proprietary because it’s controlled by Apple, even though it’s open source? There’s a possibility that it might become a more widely used language if the community helps add the missing pieces.