If you’re going to learn OOP, you need a larger project to go along with it so that you can understand ASAP that it only makes you write more code, over-complicate problems, and makes your applications hard to understand, and debug. It’s going to save you from spiralling into the typical “OOP is fine, i’m just not doing it right, i should’ve designed that differently” loop that most college graduates go through during their first professional years.
Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
11–20 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#12If you're looking for Java style OOP specifically, this would be a good place to start: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#13Bertrand Meyer Object Oriented Software Construction is excellent. It details the concepts of OOP and remains very independent of the programming language.
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#14If you’re going to learn OOP, you need a larger project to go along with it so that you can understand ASAP that it only makes you write more code, over-complicate problems, and makes your applications hard to understand, and debug. It’s going to save you from spiralling into the typical “OOP is fine, i’m just not doing it right, i should’ve designed that differently” loop that most college graduates go through durin…
I don't like OOP very much myself, but it doesn't have to result in "more code" (depends on a language support for concepts), doesn't have to lead to "over-complicating problems" (depends on language support and design skills) and it doesn't necessarily make your application hard to understand and debug (depends on the language, tooling and domain).
As with every tool you need to know how and when to use it, but it can be quite effective if done right.
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#15[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#16Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) by Sandi Metz opened doors for me - http://www.poodr.com/
If you only get one book, get this one. It is more about 'why' than about 'how' and shows what tradeofs are involved in one or another design, what problems you can run into with different solutions. Also, there is a new book by Sandi coming out: http://www.sandimetz.com/99bottles/
Her talks are highly recommended too.
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#17If you’re going to learn OOP, you need a larger project to go along with it so that you can understand ASAP that it only makes you write more code, over-complicate problems, and makes your applications hard to understand, and debug. It’s going to save you from spiralling into the typical “OOP is fine, i’m just not doing it right, i should’ve designed that differently” loop that most college graduates go through durin…
More code, more complexity? See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#18Here's the OOP model:
A program can be modelled as a set of communicating black-box objects, with their own state.
The idea is to separate concerns, abstracting away implementation behind well-defined interfaces, which can in turn be implemented by other objects to cleanly replace parts of the application.
The rest of OO is pretty much just understanding Design Patterns (a set of names for common interactions between objects, and methods for setting these interactions up), grokking inheritance, and the difference between inheritance and composition, and grasping how to design a good OO system (how thickly to layer your classes, how much abstraction and what sorts, etc.)
The best languages for learning OO are Ruby and Smalltalk.
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#19As soon as you know a little bit, I would start as soon as possible to learn by copying existing code. Learn by using different frameworks, which show you how to do things.
The classic OOP examples ("This class is a car, this Mercedes class inherits from the car class, it also has a method to move, and this Mercedes object is an instance of a Mercedes") are pretty easy to grasp for a person of normal intelligence. The frustration is to then apply this when you are stuck thinking in a procedural or functional model. However once you have learned for example how to handle a database connection, you start to apply that on your own and when a similar problem comes along, you start to notice patterns: "This is really similar to the db object, I know I did right, because I just copied the concept, so I will do this in a similar way." After that learning the design patterns is quite easy, too. But at first knowing what - in this example a - singleton is does not get you anywhere, because generally you do not know how to start.
Re: Ask HN: How to Learn OOP
#20Search for the history of the discipline, find the crucial names and study the papers + listen to talks, then think all by by yourself and decide whether / to which degree things are applicable to the contexts of your interest.
That would be the best way.
Names would be: Dijkstra, Parnas, Kay, Booch, and many others. Once you assemble a nice collection of notes, links and questions, you'll be allright and will never fall for "OO is A, B and C!" oversimplified nonsense many books attempt to sell.
Do not believe any comment in this thread either, rather take things with a (huge) grain of salt -- remember, we're dealing with a Holy Grail here, and everyone interested is quite opinionated :)