| Re: When should objects be used? [message #16078 is a reply to message #15965] |
Tue, 29 June 1999 00:00   |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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J.D. Smith (jdsmith@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu) writes:
> Now David, I cannot sit idly by while you indict me on charges of
> misleading the uninitiated populace ;).
No, no. I think I accused you (falsely, I admit) of misleading *me*! :-)
> So my advice is: use whatever style of programming produces a program
> you can explain in 1 paragraph. Object oriented programming *is* easy.
> Especially in IDL. 10 minutes will suffice to learn the mechanics of
> it.
I couldn't agree with this more. The kinds of things I have
been talking about lately *are* ridiculously easy. What is
difficult for many people is the vocabulary of OOP. (I agree
that calling something a "thingy" is not likely to help.)
But there are only a handful of words you *really* have to
know. And if these can't be learned in 10 minutes someone
is not explaining them very well.
> However, in the great space of designs, that region labelled
> Obect-Oriented contains vastly more bad designs than good ones, compared
> to the more familiar regions.
Yes. This is a concern of mine too. As Struan was mentioning
yesterday, it *is* possible to develop great heaps of
spaghetti code if you are not careful. And I've found that
people who inherit some of my object code find it slow going
to digest it occasionally, although it seems extremely
straightforward to me. I can't tell yet if this is because
it is a new way of thinking for them or because these things
are inherently more difficult to learn to use. I suspect the
former, but I don't have enough experience using them to know
for sure.
I also haven't completely solved the problem of debugging
the darn things. If I put error handlers into the code too
soon, the darn things don't break when they should and an
error can be difficult to track down.
But I think most of these problems are problems that come
with anything new. It just takes some time and some experience
to learn how to use it properly.
> So, by all means, give it a try. You'll like it. Just
> be somewhat cautious before throwing all you eggs in that basket.
Good advice, there. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
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