Comments on: OO Do I Know Thee?

By: derick.bailey

derick.bailey — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:52:21 +0000

of all the statements made, i’m really interested in the the Interfaces item the most… “(C#) Interfaces are an abstract representation of a responsibility. Too inflexible and limiting. Narrows the scope of what they can be by (ironically) assigning them too broad a role in an application.”

i’d love to see a follow-up post on this one statement, sooner rather than later.

and good for you for asking questions and drawing your own conclusions. i’ve noticed myself starting to ask more questions since I’ve ventured into ruby-land. my understanding of OO is entirely .NET-centric, and I need to fix that.

By: Ralf Westphal

Ralf Westphal — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:08:06 +0000

@Gregory: I very much feel with you. OO to me is overrated. It´s a tool for to solve some kind of problems. And OO languages are our tools to code in.

But why should we limited to think about solutions in OO terms?

I´ve given that up. Instead I´m designing software using data flows – which in the end get “mechanically” translated into OO language constructs.

The data flowing in those designs is OO in the usual way, and the leafs in the abstraction tree of my flow designs are OO code. So most of the “code” is diagrams depicting the functionality of the software in a readable manner.

Giving up traditional OO in that way has greatly helped me and many others I´ve taught to think along the same lines. Everybody feels relieved from a great burden OO has put on them.

By: gregorylong

gregorylong — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:59:57 +0000

@Naeem – true. true. This was mainly a ramble, but with a purpose in mind – to kick me into finishing the other posts (the ones were I present a structured idea.

@Mike Sweet! Object Thinking has been on my future reading list for a while. Time to make it happen. I had not read the Coffee Maker but I have to say – while I agree with many of the things Uncle Bob is saying – I believe he is repeating many of the patterns of thinking about OO that I find subtly damaging. Hmmm. Maybe I should do his exercise . . . gotta think about that one.

By: Mike Murray

Mike Murray — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:35:08 +0000

I think you would really enjoy two reads on this subject (both of them older reads):

Object Thinking by David West (http://www.amazon.com/Object-Thinking-DV-Microsoft-Professional-David/dp/0735619654) – I’m EXTREMELY surprised this is published by Microsoft (hardly anyone in the MS community has ever or does now advocate this view of OO)

Coffee Maker by Uncle Bob Martin (http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/CoffeeMaker.pdf)

These two reads in the last year or two made me realize I don’t really know what OO is (or was meant to be), and I think I’m not alone. The Object Thinking book is great because it fills in the historical background to the OO movement (most notably Smalltalk), and where (in the author’s mind) it may have gone a little awry.

These reads will make you ask more questions, which I suppose is a good thing. haha

By: Naeem Khedarun

Naeem Khedarun — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:42:29 +0000

Programming and Philosophy both require a logical and pragmatic approach to improvement.

While I like that you find Object Orientation as a solution to a smaller domain of problems than most use it for, I can’t find a structured argument in your post.

What we are looking for is not necessarily answers, but an incline pointing us in a direction of possible improvement…