[gameprogrammer] Re: "Mission Efficiency" - Blue Collar coding

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 01:47:18AM -0400, grant hallman wrote:
> Nothing's "wrong" with it, per se. Nothing's wrong with a cordless
> screwdriver either, but if that's the only tool u could have for every job,
> u might come to resent it.

This is true. But I have to say the number of real coding tasks that should
_not_ be OO is very low. Very very low. Possibly approaching zero :P

> >     I have been taught that OO allows for generality, and less coding,
> 
> Well, less than what? I was told OO would allow software tools to be
> arranged in a heirarchical library, and used for many different apps.
> Except i'd been doing that for 20 years before meeting OO. I haven't seen
> every possible example, but most OO code i see has the A-level code chopped
> into so many small pieces, and each piece embedded between layers of
> C-level stuff, that understanding it is like trying to rebuild a cow from
> so many hamburgers. And everything wants constructors, destructors, and
> other distractions which may be logically required by the language, but
> certainly not by the application. 

Bad code is bad code is bad code. OOP does not magically remove bad code, but
it does encourage modular design which at least means the bad code has a chance
of being localised. 
Yes, you can code in components without OO.
Yes, you can partition things into nice bite-size chunks without OO.

But I contend that an average group of programmers have less chance of 
putting out a crap system using OO design and techniques than an average
group of programmers using non OO design. This is where software engineering
is headed - towards the ability to put out useful solutions without requiring
all workers coming from the top 5%.

As for destructors etc. If they don't need to do anything, leave them blank.
It's really quite simple.

> The cost of OO compared to, say, structured programming? First off, the
> boundaries are fuzzy, because on the street, comparing OO with !OO is
> typically to also compare C++ with C, and Windows with !Windows. But it's a
> perfectly reasonable qn, so i'll try. But i'm really comparing OO and C++,
> and to an extent Windows, with some alternative language and o/s.
> 
> One of the costs is that OO introduces a whole new category of errors,
> having to do with scope, range, inheritability etc., which, taken one at a
> time in a comp sci course, may make sense, but which, when dumped on the
> street with a real "blue collar" programming job, become just so many more
> ways to f*** up. 

The 'more rope' theory, which applies nicely to c++, not so nicely to languages
like C# (which is, if you were wondering, quite, quite OO).


Leighton.. (who is yet to find a concrete example of something he'd rather do
in a non-OO manner).

-- 

#0421 113 305 - dayta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
How do you expect?/I will know what to do./When all I know.
Is what you tell me to. - Linkin Park/By Myself

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