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The author flatly says "do not use inheritance." Without inheritance and polymorphism, what is left in OOP? If you look at the author's 4 pillars, the only thin

The author flatly says "do not use inheritance." Without inheritance and polymorphism, what is left in OOP? If you look at the author's 4 pillars, the only thing left is encapsulation (and "Oversimplified Hot Takes") It seems like the author himself has proven why OOP is bad. You can have encapsulation without OOP. People were doing it in C 40 years ago. And people are doing it in Go right now. No one would call Go an OO language, yet it has what the author admits is OOP's only good feature.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Yes, you could do encapsulation in C. You'd have a struct. But the problem is, any function in the whole program could modify the data in the struct, possibly placing it in an invalid state. When the struct wound up in an invalid state, you had to look at the entire program to find out who did it. (C++ style) OOP encapsulation is different. Only member functions can modify the "struct" (object) data (unless you did something crazy like make your data members public). If the data is in an invalid state one of the member functions did it. Nobody else had the ability to do so. Your debugging got easier, because there's a much smaller set of places where the problem could be. Now, true, you could do that in C, with the structure declared only in one C file (and no header file), and all functions declared file static except the "public interface". But C++ make that the normal way to work, not something that you had to go out of your way to do. Inheritance: If you have a problem where it adds value, use it. It's a tool, not a religious dogma (either for or against). You could argue that most people, when they think they have a problem where inheritance adds value, are mistaken. You could even be right. But never use it? It's always the wrong choice? Get outta here. I'll use it when it helps - when the shape of the problem calls for it.
- identity0 6y ago
  I never said encapsulation was easy or obvious in C, just that it's nothing new or inherently OOP-based. I also never said that you should never use inheritance, I was just quoting the author, who, in his "defence" of OOP admits that OOP's only unique feature should not be used at all.
4mpm3 6y ago
Is OOP just syntactic sugar once you remove bad practices? I don't think so, but there's definitely an argument there. But on the issue of inheritance, what I'm trying to say is "not a good idea for the average business developer, but still a great tool for careful, ambitious developers designing the OO frameworks that business developers will use."
rovolo 6y ago
You can have polymorphism without inheritance. A single class can implement multiple interfaces, and multiple classes may implement the same interface. What is your background? C++ combines interfaces and abstract classes, so this may be the issue you're running into. An interface is an abstract class with no instance variables or method implementations. The trouble with inheritance lies in overriding the superclass's method implementations.
deleted 6y ago
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AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Yes, you could do encapsulation in C. You'd have a struct. But the problem is, any function in the whole program could modify the data in the struct, possibly placing it in an invalid state. When the struct wound up in an invalid state, you had to look at the entire program to find out who did it. (C++ style) OOP encapsulation is different. Only member functions can modify the "struct" (object) data (unless you did something crazy like make your data members public). If the data is in an invalid state one of the member functions did it. Nobody else had the ability to do so. Your debugging got easier, because there's a much smaller set of places where the problem could be. Now, true, you could do that in C, with the structure declared only in one C file (and no header file), and all functions declared file static except the "public interface". But C++ make that the normal way to work, not something that you had to go out of your way to do. Inheritance: If you have a problem where it adds value, use it. It's a tool, not a religious dogma (either for or against). You could argue that most people, when they think they have a problem where inheritance adds value, are mistaken. You could even be right. But never use it? It's always the wrong choice? Get outta here. I'll use it when it helps - when the shape of the problem calls for it.

identity0 6y ago
I never said encapsulation was easy or obvious in C, just that it's nothing new or inherently OOP-based. I also never said that you should never use inheritance, I was just quoting the author, who, in his "defence" of OOP admits that OOP's only unique feature should not be used at all.

4mpm3 6y ago

Is OOP just syntactic sugar once you remove bad practices? I don't think so, but there's definitely an argument there. But on the issue of inheritance, what I'm trying to say is "not a good idea for the average business developer, but still a great tool for careful, ambitious developers designing the OO frameworks that business developers will use."

rovolo 6y ago

You can have polymorphism without inheritance. A single class can implement multiple interfaces, and multiple classes may implement the same interface. What is your background? C++ combines interfaces and abstract classes, so this may be the issue you're running into. An interface is an abstract class with no instance variables or method implementations. The trouble with inheritance lies in overriding the superclass's method implementations.

deleted 6y ago

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