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Programming without objects

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Re: Programming without objects

#81

Post by frowaway001 »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #38
nbevans wrote: post #27

Every OOP developer is on a journey, they just don't know it. Some of them will never make it. But some will reach a point of realisation where writing well-designed software comes naturally to them because they've inadvertently stumbled upon the core concepts of functional programming. It then requires them to realise that what they've found is just FP and then requires a further minor step to actually learn a more…

I made the switch to FP. I first learnt Basic then Delphi then C then Java then C# then Python then JS and now Scala. Python is my still my favourite and I really like Scala too. Anyway, I could write big stuff in any typed language OO or otherwise. I don't get what the revelation about FP is. If you want bullet proof code, get the model checker out and work in state machines. That is far the biggest revelation I hav…

I found Scala to be hugely more productive than Python.

Re: Programming without objects

#82

Post by denibertovic »

mpweiher wrote: post #54
nbevans wrote: post #27

Every OOP developer is on a journey, they just don't know it. Some of them will never make it. But some will reach a point of realisation where writing well-designed software comes naturally to them because they've inadvertently stumbled upon the core concepts of functional programming. It then requires them to realise that what they've found is just FP and then requires a further minor step to actually learn a more…

What arrogant hogwash. I was exposed to functional programming my first year at university (it was used in the introductory courses) and quickly noticed that contrary to the hype (similar to yours), functional programs tended to be more bloated with trying to work around limitations of the less expressive programming model/language and not particularly more robust. That doesn't mean certain aspects can't be nice to h…

I've learned Haskell at university too. That doesn't prove anything though does it? At the time I've found it useless and plain wrong ... it is much later that I learned to appreciate it and value what it brings to the table...much much later.

Re: Programming without objects

#83

Post by frowaway001 »

nbevans wrote: post #68
mpweiher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What arrogant hogwash. I was exposed to functional programming my first year at university (it was used in the introductory courses) and quickly noticed that contrary to the hype (similar to yours), functional programs tended to be more bloated with trying to work around limitations of the less expressive programming model/language and not particularly more robust. That doesn't mean certain aspects can't be nice to h…

Don't worry, you haven't reached the right level of experience yet. You'll get there, though you have some attitude problems to overcome first like most young programmers.

I wonder why the parent comment is downvoted. He's dead on.

Re: Programming without objects

#84

Post by mpweiher »

nbevans wrote: post #68
mpweiher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What arrogant hogwash. I was exposed to functional programming my first year at university (it was used in the introductory courses) and quickly noticed that contrary to the hype (similar to yours), functional programs tended to be more bloated with trying to work around limitations of the less expressive programming model/language and not particularly more robust. That doesn't mean certain aspects can't be nice to h…

Don't worry, you haven't reached the right level of experience yet. You'll get there, though you have some attitude problems to overcome first like most young programmers.

LOL! My 1st year university course was 1989. When were you born?

Interestingly, that is exactly what I see in the current generation of FP hypsters. Grandiose claims based on very limited experience. Aka: know so little, assume so much.

But don't worry, it happens to the best. My favorite is still the Simon Peyton-Jones talk on Data Parallel Haskell, where he can't help himself, but just has to make the snide comment "this is only possible in a language like Haskell". Hand raised in the auditorium: The HPC community has been doing this for years. In FORTRAN. But carry on...

(And of course, the results are dismal: 6 cores required to match sequential C! Considering that this sort of concurrency [there are others] is exclusively for better performance, that is a damning result).

Despite these, er, issues, it is an absolutely fascinating talk, and the techniques look quite worthwhile. After all, they've been in use in the HPC community for some time :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWSZ4c9yqW8

Re: Programming without objects

#85

Post by seanmcdirmid »

swift wrote: post #60
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way OOP is taught often doesn't bring up object thinking. But if you believe it is not natural, try thinking mathematically (without nouns or names as unique aliasable identifiers). Or without isa or hasa relationships. Our minds have 50,000+ years of language expertise, and only a couple thousand for formal non linguistic equational reasoning (where things only have structure and are unnameable).

I'm not so sure. There's some truth to what you're saying, but by "is a", statically typed OO languages generally mean something much different than what we mean by that in human languages. I find OO's obsession with hierarchy and taxonomy to be profoundly unintuitive.

There is much more to OOP than Java.

Re: Programming without objects

#86

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mtrimpe wrote: post #77
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way OOP is taught often doesn't bring up object thinking. But if you believe it is not natural, try thinking mathematically (without nouns or names as unique aliasable identifiers). Or without isa or hasa relationships. Our minds have 50,000+ years of language expertise, and only a couple thousand for formal non linguistic equational reasoning (where things only have structure and are unnameable).

Then again... capturing things with hierarchical, permanent, non-context dependent hasa / isa relationships is very, very far removed from how we've used language for the past 50k years.

Can you give me an example? I'm at work right now in a hierarchical, permanent, non-context dependent environment and is-a, has-a relationships abound. We deal with the complexity of the world by organizing it into hierarchies.

Re: Programming without objects

#87

Post by chton »

Terr_ wrote: post #16
chton wrote: post #10

What this article seems to miss is part of the raison d'être of Object Oriented Programming. It's not just about how you encapsulate state and how you act on that state. Forget the exact way the type system works, or what extension methods are, or even what polymorphism is. The big advantage of OO is that it acts as a distillation of how humans think. We're accustomed to thinking in terms of 'things that do stuff'. W…

> skeuomorphic No, skeuomorphism involves ornamental details, which are at best hints about how something is to be used. How you break-down the responsibilities of your system and name them is much much more important than that.

I agree it's not the best word for it, but what I meant is that the elements are made to look and behave similar to their real-life or conceptual analogues. Think of it mostly as the software UI skeuomorphism: we are able to recognize the functions of the software faster because it is designed to look like something we know.

Re: Programming without objects

#88

Post by scscsc »

shangxiao wrote: post #79
scscsc wrote: post #61

It seems to me that everyone is missing the point behind object-orientation. Object-orientation sucks for everything except user interfaces. If you don't believe me, try writing a UI library without objects and see what happens. UI is OOP's best (and only compelling) use case. For all other algorithms classical data structures/ADTs are much better. If you don't believe me, try writing an OOP compiler.

I write a lot of interactive SVG based user interfaces in JavaScript and always default to using "classes" to represent composable elements in the UI. I've recently been wondering about whether writing UI code with a functional language would even be possible. When it comes to data manipulation though I will always use underscore.

My thesis is that by trying to write functional/imperative UI code you will create your own ad-hoc OOP system.

Re: Programming without objects

#89

Post by mpweiher »

denibertovic wrote: post #82
mpweiher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What arrogant hogwash. I was exposed to functional programming my first year at university (it was used in the introductory courses) and quickly noticed that contrary to the hype (similar to yours), functional programs tended to be more bloated with trying to work around limitations of the less expressive programming model/language and not particularly more robust. That doesn't mean certain aspects can't be nice to h…

I've learned Haskell at university too. That doesn't prove anything though does it? At the time I've found it useless and plain wrong ... it is much later that I learned to appreciate it and value what it brings to the table...much much later.

We didn't have Haskell in 1989. As I wrote, there are things I value in FP languages in general, and more specifically Backus's FP calculus inspired me to come up with Higher Order Messaging[1].

It's nice to have language support for functional style (let, for example) where that is appropriate for the problem at hand, but you can write in that style without the language support easily enough.

On the other hand, when FP style is not appropriate for the problem at hand, it really, really gets in the way, and that's the case a lot of the time. Many if not most problems (outside of writing compilers for FP languages) don't really fit the functional style, and have to be made to fit.

Experienced devs will choose appropriate tools for the problem at hand. Me, I like adaptive tooling that I can bend to fit the problem, which is why I like dynamic OO languages, internal DSLs and Domain Modeling[2] in general.

In fact, I think the current tools are still a little too inflexible for this, which is why I am creating a language to address some of these issues: http://objective.st

FP seems to be more about bending the problem to fit the tooling, which I guess may work for a specific kind of mindset.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_order_message

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling-Complexi...

Re: Programming without objects

#90

Post by chton »

yason wrote: post #67
chton wrote: post #10

What this article seems to miss is part of the raison d'être of Object Oriented Programming. It's not just about how you encapsulate state and how you act on that state. Forget the exact way the type system works, or what extension methods are, or even what polymorphism is. The big advantage of OO is that it acts as a distillation of how humans think. We're accustomed to thinking in terms of 'things that do stuff'. W…

The big advantage of OO is that it acts as a distillation of how humans think. We're accustomed to thinking in terms of 'things that do stuff'. What OO provides is essentially a skeuomorphic element to your code, where your basic units have some resemblance to real items and concepts. This makes it a lot easier to reason about large codebases, and makes them easier to document (in theory). It seems to me that you're…

My intention was focused entirely on object oriented modelling and programming. Interface design is a tool to do that, but in and of itself does not provide the correspondence with the way humans think. The core of OO is to have independent objects that combine behaviour and data. Whatever your type system, whatever your language constructs, that core is what provides the advantage. I was considering mostly the basic ideas of OO modelling in general rather than whatever way you choose to achieve that.
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