Comments on: A Very Poor Object Model Is Really No Object Model At All

By: Nathan Zook

Nathan Zook — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:52:34 +0000

That example is EXACTLY the sort of thing that convinced me that OOP lacked an ‘s’. Until I me ruby.

To drive the point about bulldozers vs shovels: NOT EVERY APPLICATION SHOULD BE DONE IN OO. SOMETIMES “C” IS WHAT YOU NEED!!

Of course, if you are doing microprocessor validation, asm is what you need, so you better develop the tools to do it well.

By: Colin Jack

Colin Jack — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:25:36 +0000

Good post and related posts. As you say composition is where its at in general, a little inheritance can be fine but still way overused.

Interesting stuff.

By: Sean Chambers

Sean Chambers — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:47:57 +0000

good post!

I agree with Steve that it would probably be good measure to show the domain model above with a proper architecture using composition instead of inheritance. I think that would be a good followup.

By: Keith Elder

Keith Elder — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:03:06 +0000

Even,

For clarification yes, I’d consider you a friend as well. I didn’t want to admit that publicly but you forced my hand (kidding!).

I think you answered your own question about “beat to death” with the way you referred to the sample object model as a “college freshman object model”. That was the EXACT point I was going for when I built that crazy “educational” model. While the people I have been talking to aren’t freshmen in college, I’ve seem them still trying to apply what they thought would be the “perfect object model” to an application. This is the point of the post to get them to not think like that just because their professor put it on a test.

The point Evan is it isn’t about how you and I follow OOP principles. The point of this whole excercise is to show people these things:

1. Don’t build an object model before you know the requirements.
2. Know the business requirements.

If you wanna chat more, I’m on MSN anytime. http://keithelder.net/about.aspx.

Hope that helps.

-Keith

By: steve wilson

steve wilson — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:42:27 +0000

Can we have a composition example, be nice to see how you would achieve the above model using the technique you suggest

By: Evan

Evan — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:12:08 +0000

@Ben

It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking anything when I read your comment. I would have sprayed it everywhere.

By: Ben Scheirman

Ben Scheirman — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:20:40 +0000

Dude, if your object models aren’t AT LEAST 10 levels deep then you aren’t a hardcore OO Programmer.

Real Programmers Do it DEEP.