Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

blog.dmbcllc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#21

Post by jcromartie »

thinkcomp wrote: post #3

I don't think this article is particularly well-written. However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases. That's why the Lampshade framework I wrote is purely procedural, and why I'm able to write software on top of it so quickly. Client-side GUI programming is a different story, in my opinion. In general, just bec…

> However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases.

I read his conclusion as that object oriented programming has failed us because it is too hard to understand, and we need a new, simpler, more accessible, dumbed-down programming paradigm. He is advocating programming for non-programmers, which has been tried many times before and has always met the worst kind of failure (universal disdain by "real" programmers).

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#24

Post by bkovitz »

greyman wrote: post #11
davidmathers wrote: post #6

Hacker News Is Failing Us. This link is currently in the #2 position on the front page. I wonder if the people who up voted it actually read it or just agreed with the thesis?

Or, we are failing ourselves, but otherwise you are completely right. There is nothing in the article explaining why author thinks that "Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us". Anyway, this is a good way to trick Hacker News: 1. Write curious title with some programming term in it. 2. Write some random thoughts in the article body mentioning the term. 3. Submit to HN 4. Traffic!

Actually, the article says that OOP has failed us by not being a good fit to the way most programmers' minds work.

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#25

Post by jshen »

bkovitz wrote: post #24
greyman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we are failing ourselves, but otherwise you are completely right. There is nothing in the article explaining why author thinks that "Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us". Anyway, this is a good way to trick Hacker News: 1. Write curious title with some programming term in it. 2. Write some random thoughts in the article body mentioning the term. 3. Submit to HN 4. Traffic!

Actually, the article says that OOP has failed us by not being a good fit to the way most programmers' minds work.

I say that the cause of global warming is the decrease in number of pirates on the planet.

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#26

Post by aggieben » 

  I really hate to say this, as much as I like object
  oriented programming but, I really think we might be better 
  off if we went back to procedural programming for the bulk 
  of the applications that we write and left the object 
  oriented stuff to people who really understand it and for 
  problems that can not be solved any other way.

  Meanwhile, back at the lab, we need to come up with a 
  programming environment that most people understand 
  naturally.  We need to do usability studies on the 
  languages we develop just like we test applications we 
  develop for users.  Instead of trying to simplify what we 
  are already doing, which continues to provide solutions 
  that only programmers understand, we need to provide 
  solutions that are no longer programmer centric.
Isn't this what we used to call Visual Basic?

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#27

Post by aggieben »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19
timr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"closures provide better scoping flexibility than classes. Languages that have these features make it obvious how restrictive C++ is in binding this functionality in with the type system." C++ can/does do anonymous functions (for example, see boost lambda), and can even give you most of what you want from first-class functions and closures (using functors). The parts that you don't get are due mostly to the fact that…

"there seems to be a backlash against type safety in this forum" You've said what I've been thinking for many months now. We've also got a strong contingent of anti-MS ranters. As to the merits of the article -- there are none. Oddly enough, I can't make a case against his argument because he doesn't have one, save his ultimate realization that it was the language itself. "It came to me in a dream" is a very difficul…

We've also got a strong contingent of anti-MS ranters.

I've been having to work in MFC recently for a client, and boy...

If you ever needed a reminder why some people dislike C++ so much, just work with MFC. It's one of the worst bastardizations of C++ I've ever seen (of course, to be fair, one has to admit that much of the really sucky stuff in MFC was done before the C++ standards were very good, and long before the compilers caught up).

Writing C++ using std:: and boost:: and other libraries written in "Modern C++" is pure bliss compared to doing it the "Microsoft Way".

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#28

Post by jimbokun »

timr wrote: post #18
greendestiny wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well templates do let you do just about everything being a meta-programming language - however libraries rarely use them and they are very complicated to implement yourself. I've not found static typing to be a big productivity win. I think it disallows a small subset of bugs. Like most people I've been a C++ programmer because it was the highest performance language with the best support for operating and window sys…

These strong-typing/weak-typing debates are the programmer's equivalent of skirt-length trends. The strong type system of C++ was a direct reaction to the deficiencies of the cast-happy, C-style of coding that came before; now we're back to dynamic typing. Ten years from now, after this generation of college grads has been burned while using the latest silver bullet for real projects, we'll be back to something more…

I think better type inferencing may bring strong typing back in vogue.

I think what really makes programming in a "dynamic" language significantly more pleasant is not having to type (on the keyboard) type (int, Object, etc.) declarations. A strictly, statically typed language with a good type inferencing engine, like Scala or Haskell, makes a lot of this go away.

I understand (though don't have enough experience to verify) that there are times that the type inferencing occasionally makes things harder when you get a type error and can't identify its source. But certainly a win overall compared to explicit types everywhere.

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#29

Post by raganwald »

greendestiny wrote: post #9

Object Orientation failed because it's too hard to understand? I blinked in incredulity. Object Orientation hasn't failed, but we're coming to appreciate its short comings as a sole design paradigm. For C programmers, C++ gave them access to variable execution via polymorphism (without ugly function pointers) and more flexible scoping via classes. In languages that provide first class and anonymous functions polymorp…

"Object Orientation failed because it's too hard to understand? I blinked in incredulity"

With great respect, I suggest: If you know what a closure is, you may have trouble understanding how OO is difficult to understand for many other people. The kind of people who have never heard of a closure, and whose eyes glaze over as you try to explain that a closure is an inside-out object and an objct is an inside-out closure.

Re: Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

#30

Post by jimbokun »

jcromartie wrote: post #21
thinkcomp wrote: post #3

I don't think this article is particularly well-written. However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases. That's why the Lampshade framework I wrote is purely procedural, and why I'm able to write software on top of it so quickly. Client-side GUI programming is a different story, in my opinion. In general, just bec…

> However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases. I read his conclusion as that object oriented programming has failed us because it is too hard to understand , and we need a new, simpler, more accessible, dumbed-down programming paradigm. He is advocating programming for non-programmers, which has been tried many…

I would say we've had it for a while now. Ever seen the things that people on a trading desk do with Excel? Or maybe VB, when they get daring.

Generally something that gets the job done that they want it do.

However, it is not going to be very extensible, no one besides the person who wrote it will be able to understand it (and maybe not even him), they will have no idea what to do if they want it to go faster, or if they need to make it work on the web, or integrate some data feed that doesn't have any easy way to import into Excel, or...

In summary, we have programming for non-programmers, it works as well as can be expected, but sometimes you really, really need a programmer.

Post reply on HN