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The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

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Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#41

Post by zozbot234 »

cout wrote: post #36
ncmncm wrote: post #13

Classes were never definitional for OO, so prototypes, as originated in Self and adopted in JS, are not a violation of it. Function calls and messages are, fundamentally, isomorphic. Messages were never definitional. The notion of "purity", everything is an object, was never definitional. That was a Smalltalk conceit. Alan Kay named the idea, but stole it. So he doesn't get to impose his religion. What is definitiona…

Why do you consider inheritance definitional? Is it definitional by de facto, or is there an authoritative definition that you are using? The reason OO is a powerful organizational too is because it mirrors how many people naturally think about the real world. But inheritance as adopted by most simula-derived languages does not exist in the real world. What does exist in the real world is prototypal inheritance (spec…

Inheritance is definitional of OO as opposed to a simpler "object-based" paradigm.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#42

Post by throwaway894345 »

kstenerud wrote: post #14

It sounds a lot like he's trying to claim victory via semantic quibbling. We've learned a lot and incorporated a lot of ideas, machines, and concepts into the mainstream over the past few decades. But one thing that hasn't stayed the same is what set of things fits into what grab bag encompassed by a word someone came up with decades ago to describe the state of things at the time. Once you start arguing "OOP" vs xyz…

> Once you start arguing "OOP" vs xyz or "FP" vs xyz, you've missed the point.

I think if we were intellectually honest in our arguments this would be fine—we could manage that OOP is poorly defined. Instead almost every debate about OOP takes this form: someone criticizes things which are exclusive to OOP (e.g., inheritance) or very common in OOP (kingdom of nouns, everything having references to everything else i.e., bananna-gorilla-jungle design or etc) and the OOP proponent argues that these things aren’t true OOP or else that “this is just bad code; anyone can write bad code in any paradigm”. In other words, OOP proponents reliably turn the debate toward semantics rather than engaging with the substantial criticism (if it is “just bad code” why does it seem to be so much more prevalent in OOP than FP?).

We could have a more interesting, robust debate, but poorly defined terms + bad faith means we get the same no true Scotsman rhetoric over and over, and it’s hopelessly dull.

To your point, critics of OOP could do more to anticipate these semantic arguments. Rather than using the term “OOP” they could just criticize features directly or they could give their definition of OO up front.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#43

Post by ebingdom »

jtdev wrote: post #34
slver wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is it's exactly the same thing with functional languages, and no, there's no clear definition of FP. Some FP is lazy, some isn't. Some is immutable, some isn't. Some claim it's a style in any language, others that it's a type of language.

FP is a cult.

> FP is a cult.

It's a programming paradigm based on simple, well-understood mathematical framework. It's also the starting point for most research in programming language theory.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#44

Post by throwaway894345 »

cout wrote: post #38
throwaway894345 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every OO proponent seems to have their own definition of OO. Another I’ve heard is “message passing”, although that one even has many different flavors since it isn’t well defined and some argue that methods constitute message passing and others envision something closer to an Actor model. This is all well and good as long as people are clear about what their definition is (although it is weird how many proponents ha…

The concept of a message is older than the actor model, so I don't think it can be considered a fundamental part of the definition of a message (so Smalltalk-style messages are still messages). I do think the Actor model is the most ideal form of message-passing in a single-process system, and seems to be the direction many languages are heading toward as they evolve.

To be clear, I’m saying “something like the actor model”, not the actor model specifically, though I assume the actor model also satisfies even the narrower definitions of message passing.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#45

Post by ebingdom »

Rochus wrote: post #39
ebingdom wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it doesn't have a formal 100% unambiguous definition, but it's certainly _more_ well-defined than OOP: a functional programming language is one which is based on lambda calculus.

Isn't every existing programming language eventually based on (or at least traceable to) lambda calculus? OOP is just another way to organize code. Human language is unsuitable for " glass clear ", unambiguous definitions, just because of its inherent fuzziness (which is nota bene an essential property for efficient communication).

> Isn't every existing programming language eventually based on (or at least traceable to) lambda calculus?

Not really. FP has an obvious connection to lambda calculus. Many OOP languages don't even have a straightforward notion of "function", which is what lambda calculus is all about.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#46

Post by tsimionescu »

ehnto wrote: post #27
yakubin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't argue that ECS is a good fit for everything. It argues that it is a better fit than OOP for some of the things OOP was intended for. And that it's a broader theme, where OOP is usually not the right tool for the job, even when it was originally intended to solve that particular job.

I'm confused. ECS is a type of OOP, is it not? An entity is an object in the same way a model is an object.

I think one of the most core ideas of OOP is encapsulation, and in this way ECS is radically opposed to OOP.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#47

Post by samsquire »

ECS is often implemented in an OOP language. I know of no ECS languages.

You have objects that you iterate over and apply changes to the struct or object's fields like x and y coordinates in a game tick for the "next state"

Essentially you end up with lots of global functions and very large API space that has no ordering. There's inherent ordering to global function application to produce the correct result. So it produces complex APIs.

If you move the global functions to the entity objects themselves, you end up with OOP. So I'm not really sure what the author is arguing for.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#48

Post by Rochus »

cout wrote: post #38
throwaway894345 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every OO proponent seems to have their own definition of OO. Another I’ve heard is “message passing”, although that one even has many different flavors since it isn’t well defined and some argue that methods constitute message passing and others envision something closer to an Actor model. This is all well and good as long as people are clear about what their definition is (although it is weird how many proponents ha…

The concept of a message is older than the actor model, so I don't think it can be considered a fundamental part of the definition of a message (so Smalltalk-style messages are still messages). I do think the Actor model is the most ideal form of message-passing in a single-process system, and seems to be the direction many languages are heading toward as they evolve.

> The concept of a message is older than the actor model

Publications by Hewitt or Sussman in the seventies even suggest that the concept traces back to lambda calculus.

> so Smalltalk-style messages are still messages

Only Smalltalk-72 had true "message passing" (i.e. arbitrary tokens sent to an object for interpretation); Smalltalk-76 onwards uses a virtual methods implementation similar to the one of Simula 67 or C++ instead.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#49

Post by jtdev »

ebingdom wrote: post #43
jtdev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FP is a cult.

> FP is a cult. It's a programming paradigm based on simple, well-understood mathematical framework. It's also the starting point for most research in programming language theory.

Explain why closures are allowed to mutate state in this “simple, well understood” framework.

Re: The Repeated Deaths of OOP (2015)

#50

Post by ncmncm »

cout wrote: post #36
ncmncm wrote: post #13

Classes were never definitional for OO, so prototypes, as originated in Self and adopted in JS, are not a violation of it. Function calls and messages are, fundamentally, isomorphic. Messages were never definitional. The notion of "purity", everything is an object, was never definitional. That was a Smalltalk conceit. Alan Kay named the idea, but stole it. So he doesn't get to impose his religion. What is definitiona…

Why do you consider inheritance definitional? Is it definitional by de facto, or is there an authoritative definition that you are using? The reason OO is a powerful organizational too is because it mirrors how many people naturally think about the real world. But inheritance as adopted by most simula-derived languages does not exist in the real world. What does exist in the real world is prototypal inheritance (spec…

Dahl and Nygaard originated and developed the concept. Inheritance was in their definition. You can invent other formalisms, but those should have different names if you are not actively seeking to confuse people.
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