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Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

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Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#31

Post by unclebucknasty »

Part of the problem with OO is the other stuff we heaped on it, while still calling it OO. So, we're not always assessing "pure" OO when we talk about it. For instance, immutability and OO are diametrically opposed concepts.

Objects were supposed to encapsulate data (state) and expose operations that would mutate that state in a controlled fashion. But, we then imposed this immutability requirement, whereby we create these objects very explicitly with long-winded builder patterns, then make copies of the data when necessary,etc. At this point, we have effectively externalized the logic around the object's state and the object itself is nothing more than a C-style struct.

Sure, immutability has its advantages, but we should acknowledge that it's not a OO-friendly concept.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#32

Post by mattmanser »

greydius wrote: post #14
neals wrote: post #7

As somebody who works on many different OOP-projects, could somebody tell me how I should structure my software if not using OOP?

This is the basic stategy that I try to follow as much as possible: Classes that hold data have no methods (beyond getters/setters). Classes that implement behavior have no mutable state; they exist as namespaces for the functionality that they provide. I've been quite successful with this approach. It leads to code that is easier to understand than a big ball of stateful objects.

Someone did this on a project I work on (C#).

Utter nightmare. Loads of repeated code as new programmers didn't know methods existed, loads of extraneous DTO objects, lots of nested single line methods, massive code bloat. Hard to find what actually does stuff, hard to use built in editor functionality.

It's really not a good tactic imo.

I'm undoing it as I go, at one point after having worked on it nearly 4 months according to git I'd still had a net negative on total lines of code, having added a ton of new functionality.

Admittedly, it's one of those projects which has had a bunch of freelancers/contractors work on it, but I personally really don't see what it added to move the methods off the classes apart from confusion, code duplication and code bloat.

I see the need for something, on the startup + enterprisey projects I work on you always seem to end up with at least one mega class that ends up being a beast, the Order, Person, Customer, Job or Project objects are usual culprits, but most other classes don't need much past a few basic methods. I'm just not convinced this programming tactic is it having now seen it in the wild.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#33

Post by hashhar »

geophile wrote: post #6

I view OO as analogous to the earliest control structures added to programming languages. We all remember "GOTO considered harmful", including generations of programmers who weren't alive when the letter was written, and may not have read it. Around that time, language designers realized that GOTOs were used to implement the same patterns over and over: Conditional execution, looping of various kinds. And we ended up…

I agree with your view. Most of the programming language constructs and ideologies are simply design patterns that been extracted into a single unit and given a particular name.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#34

Post by coldtea »

>Was object-oriented programming a failure?

Only ignoring the fact that almost ALL programs we care about, from OSes (Windows, OS X) to Games, and from Office applications (MS Office, Open Office) to graphics apps (Photoshop, etc) to NLEs (Premiere, FCPX, Avid), to IDEs (Eclipse, IDEA, Visual Studio), to major compilers, JITs and runtimes (LLVM, Oracle HotSpot, MS CLR) etc, including all major browsers people browse the web through (Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox) and all major Javascript engines that power the web are written in an Object-Oriented way, and usually in the way C++ defines it.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#35

Post by coldtea »

_0w8t wrote: post #16
gpderetta wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. "Everything is an object" was an extremism (today's extremism is the crusade against 'mutable state'), but otherwise OoO has been useful. For example it has seen great success in GUIs.

I can definitely state that OOP allows to implement GUI. But "great success" I can see only for vendors selling OOP tools for GUI development. Consider web frameworks. Given a choice I select React and similar functional frameworks than OOP based ones. They are just more productive and scale better. Or consider QT. My colleagues with a lot of QT experience use QML to create GUI. They avoid any C++ GUI code unless it…

>Consider web frameworks. Given a choice I select React and similar functional frameworks than OOP based ones. They are just more productive and scale better.

That's because there are no decent OO based web UIs, because the web development experience and stack is a total mess to begin with.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#36

Post by coldtea »

mattmanser wrote: post #32
greydius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the basic stategy that I try to follow as much as possible: Classes that hold data have no methods (beyond getters/setters). Classes that implement behavior have no mutable state; they exist as namespaces for the functionality that they provide. I've been quite successful with this approach. It leads to code that is easier to understand than a big ball of stateful objects.

Someone did this on a project I work on (C#). Utter nightmare. Loads of repeated code as new programmers didn't know methods existed, loads of extraneous DTO objects, lots of nested single line methods, massive code bloat. Hard to find what actually does stuff, hard to use built in editor functionality. It's really not a good tactic imo. I'm undoing it as I go, at one point after having worked on it nearly 4 months a…

>Admittedly, it's one of those projects which has had a bunch of freelancers/contractors work on it, but I personally really don't see what it added to move the methods off the classes apart from confusion, code duplication and code bloat.

Moving the methods off the classes would actually lead to less code duplication -- as now different data that need the same treatment can be handled with the same methods.

"Loads of repeated code as new programmers didn't know methods existed" seems like a bigger issue here...

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#37

Post by otalp »

k__ wrote: post #27
mpweiher wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sturgeon's Law: "Sure 90% of OO is crap. That's because 90% of everything is crap" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

There are laws for everything :D

Or more precisely, 90% of everything.

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#38

Post by naasking »

delinka wrote: post #2

Why are there still those who think any advocate of OOP is an advocate of "OOP or Nothing! All things are Objects! All things are an instantiation of a class! All things must derive from a root class! etc."? OOP is a tool. And generally a useful one. Every new programming paradigm at its inception was going to Save The World and make programming A Better Place. Turns out, every one if these paradigms is a tool with u…

> So OOP might only be useful in a limited number of cases. I find it comfortable for categorizing functions: "Here's all the stuff you can do with a String" or "All windows behave like this..."

That's a module. This scope creep is part of the problem with OOP, as it slowly encompasses features that are orthogonal to their main purpose.

OOP is mainly about procedural abstraction: any type implementing a protocol (set of methods) should be indistinguishable from any other type that implements that same protocol. This enables the open extension that characterizes OOP.

So amending your statement to make it truly about objects, "here's all the stuff you can do with String-like values".

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#39

Post by jghn »

coldtea wrote: post #36
mattmanser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone did this on a project I work on (C#). Utter nightmare. Loads of repeated code as new programmers didn't know methods existed, loads of extraneous DTO objects, lots of nested single line methods, massive code bloat. Hard to find what actually does stuff, hard to use built in editor functionality. It's really not a good tactic imo. I'm undoing it as I go, at one point after having worked on it nearly 4 months a…

> Admittedly, it's one of those projects which has had a bunch of freelancers/contractors work on it, but I personally really don't see what it added to move the methods off the classes apart from confusion, code duplication and code bloat. Moving the methods off the classes would actually lead to less code duplication -- as now different data that need the same treatment can be handled with the same methods. "Loads…

A bigger issue indeed, and one I've also seen in fully OOP code bases. Entire parallel bits of functionality as developer A has no idea that developer B already made the thing they want

Re: Was object-oriented programming a failure? (2015)

#40

Post by jghn »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #31

Part of the problem with OO is the other stuff we heaped on it, while still calling it OO. So, we're not always assessing "pure" OO when we talk about it. For instance, immutability and OO are diametrically opposed concepts. Objects were supposed to encapsulate data (state) and expose operations that would mutate that state in a controlled fashion. But, we then imposed this immutability requirement, whereby we create…

Inheritance is arguably one of those things. It certainly goes against Kay's original scheme, which was more like actors.

To me OOP winds up looking a lot better without the inheritance

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