4 ms·

Yep...there are dynamic languages (Ex: APL and Common Lisp) where you can use OO primitives, but it usually isn't as encouraged if at all. I don't recall hearin

Yep...there are dynamic languages (Ex: APL and Common Lisp) where you can use OO primitives, but it usually isn't as encouraged if at all. I don't recall hearing much about proper design patterns in those languages. I'm not saying they don't exist, but it isn't a big deal. Smalltalk on the other hand forces you to do OO and I just read most of a book on the proper design patterns to use in it. It certainly isn't as bad as when I started to learn Java (it's almost a minor miracle to me that as much stuff gets built in Java as it does with all the straight-jacket boilerplate it has) but it is definitely there. Especially in the scripting arena (shorter programs of maybe a page or two) I find that nearly all OO scripts I see would generally be shorter and clearer as a few global data structures and some functions to operate on it.

kazinator 7y ago
On the contrary, Common Lisp codebases nowadays are almost annoyingly replete with OOP.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  Paul Graham save us all ;)
mr_crankypants 7y ago
Funny you should mention global data structures. Last winter, when doing Advent of Code, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I didn't really need to be writing super well-factored Clean Code™ with no globals or anything like that to solve these problems. And, when I stopped worrying about that stuff, my code ended up getting cleaner and easier to understand and debug. New hypothesis: Some practices make all the sense in the world in huge enterprise projects, and no sense at all in small utility projects.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  Agreed. The way I code would need to flip-flop if I was more involved with the writing of large software projects. Funny enough though. Those that I work with still write a lot of what I would call scripts, but they're super over architected and a lot of time is wasted and it is hard to read them. Sometimes simplicity is best as you observed.

kazinator 7y ago

On the contrary, Common Lisp codebases nowadays are almost annoyingly replete with OOP.

6thaccount2 7y ago
Paul Graham save us all ;)

mr_crankypants 7y ago

Funny you should mention global data structures. Last winter, when doing Advent of Code, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I didn't really need to be writing super well-factored Clean Code™ with no globals or anything like that to solve these problems. And, when I stopped worrying about that stuff, my code ended up getting cleaner and easier to understand and debug. New hypothesis: Some practices make all the sense in the world in huge enterprise projects, and no sense at all in small utility projects.

6thaccount2 7y ago
Agreed. The way I code would need to flip-flop if I was more involved with the writing of large software projects. Funny enough though. Those that I work with still write a lot of what I would call scripts, but they're super over architected and a lot of time is wasted and it is hard to read them. Sometimes simplicity is best as you observed.