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This is a nice narrative. Some people have misconceptions about what OO gives you in comparison to other paradigms. OO provides specific abstractions, which may

by dj-wonk 13y ago

This is a nice narrative. Some people have misconceptions about what OO gives you in comparison to other paradigms. OO provides specific abstractions, which may be useful in many cases, but also may be too much. In some cases, simpler abstractions may be preferable. Less complected (baked together and inseparable) abstractions can often be found in other paradigms. For example, in Java, a person might use a class even though all they need is a namespace. In many functional languages, you can just create a namespace without the other trappings of OO. Sometimes that is just what you want. I've seen some nice slides from Clojure talks that talk about how many OO abstractions are complected (combined) versions of simpler abstractions. If anyone has seen the slides I'm talking about, please share. For example, a class is combination of a namespace and ___. Possible answers include mutable state, shared data, and so on.

Totient 13y ago
I think that was Rich Hickey's "Simple Made Easy" talk: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy I think one of his most important points is that objects are good for representing, well, actual objects. As in, you have a mouse, or screen or some little robot that you are controlling through code. And that's all they are good for. Need a way to define a bunch of static methods and avoid name collisions? - you want a namespace. Need a place to store a bunch of data about something? - you want a associative array. Need a way to call the same function on different types? - you want an interface. I'm not sure about this, but I suspect part of the problem stems from the fact that object-oriented languages (usually Java these days) are the first language that students are exposed to. Once you start thinking in OO abstractions, it takes some effort to break out of the mindset.

by dj-wonk 13y ago

Totient 13y ago

I think that was Rich Hickey's "Simple Made Easy" talk: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy I think one of his most important points is that objects are good for representing, well, actual objects. As in, you have a mouse, or screen or some little robot that you are controlling through code. And that's all they are good for. Need a way to define a bunch of static methods and avoid name collisions? - you want a namespace. Need a place to store a bunch of data about something? - you want a associative array. Need a way to call the same function on different types? - you want an interface. I'm not sure about this, but I suspect part of the problem stems from the fact that object-oriented languages (usually Java these days) are the first language that students are exposed to. Once you start thinking in OO abstractions, it takes some effort to break out of the mindset.