3 ms·

>I'm sure there specific things that some people require before they will label something as OO. For many folks, it's basically built-in language syntax for ob

by jasode 12y ago

>I'm sure there specific things that some people require before they will label something as OO. For many folks, it's basically built-in language syntax for objects (data+methods) instead of using patterns, idioms, and conventions. The object-oriented nature is explicit with syntax of language keywords instead of implicit with code organization. >Is it a functional question or a religious question as to whether or not Go is Object Oriented I think it's more of a functional/pragmatic one and not religious. (I would substitute the word "religious" for "psychological" -- more on that in the next paragraph). If a language is designated as "object-oriented", I think it's reasonable to have some expectations that the programmer does not have to write idioms & patterns to emulate C++/C# type of objects. That said, there are still psychological motivations for expanding "object-oriented" to describe what Go can do. The problem is that the term "object-oriented" has gained a lot of currency as something useful and desirable in the programming world. Therefore, if someone labels something (e.g. Go) as "not object-oriented", that has an implied judgement that Go is somehow "handicapped" and has less power than C++/C#/etc. Ideally, all programmers would treat the following statements as something neutral and non-threatening: "Go is not object-oriented. C language not-object-oriented." But since we can't (the psychology), we get articles explaining how C and Go are actually object-oriented after all. We do this, that, and the other thing, and voila, "C is object oriented."

jeremyjh 12y ago
>Therefore, if someone labels something (e.g. Go) as "not object-oriented", that has an implied judgement that Go is somehow "handicapped" and has less power than C++/C#/etc. But that is precisely the point of Go: it IS less powerful. It has no inheritance, no generics or templates, no macros or pre-processor, no raw pointer access, no exceptions etc. This is all completely intentional, and yes it will be a turn-off to many.
- jasode 12y ago
  Understood. But then people can just shift the argument around to the word "powerful". Unlike electricity where "power" is composed of just 2 dimensions (voltage and current), "power" in a language has hundreds of dimensions. If for one programmer, the "interesting" things in Go include ultra fast compile times, builtin concurrency primitives, network library, etc, then to him, "Go is more powerful than C++." The disagreement over what dimensional components of "powerful" is worth comparing then feeds more debates (and implied judgments of language worthiness).

by jasode 12y ago

jeremyjh 12y ago

>Therefore, if someone labels something (e.g. Go) as "not object-oriented", that has an implied judgement that Go is somehow "handicapped" and has less power than C++/C#/etc. But that is precisely the point of Go: it IS less powerful. It has no inheritance, no generics or templates, no macros or pre-processor, no raw pointer access, no exceptions etc. This is all completely intentional, and yes it will be a turn-off to many.

jasode 12y ago
Understood. But then people can just shift the argument around to the word "powerful". Unlike electricity where "power" is composed of just 2 dimensions (voltage and current), "power" in a language has hundreds of dimensions. If for one programmer, the "interesting" things in Go include ultra fast compile times, builtin concurrency primitives, network library, etc, then to him, "Go is more powerful than C++." The disagreement over what dimensional components of "powerful" is worth comparing then feeds more debates (and implied judgments of language worthiness).