Re: What is OOP?

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sun, 01 Dec 2024 20:34:34 -0800
Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:
>

wij <wyniijj5@gmail.com> writes:
>
In response to the question of the subject line...
>
Just because a program is being written in a language that has
functions doesn't mean that what is being done is functional
programming.
>
Just because a program is being written in a language that has
classes and objects doesn't mean that what is being done is
object-oriented programming.
>
More than anything else object-oriented programming is a mindset
or a programming methodology.  It helps if the language being
used supports classes, etc, but the methodology can be used even
in languages that don't have them.
>
A quote:
>
    My guess is that object-oriented programming will be in the
    1980s what structured programming was in the 1970s.
    Everyone will be in favor of it.  Every manufacturer will
    promote his products as supporting it.  Every manager will
    pay lip service to it.  Every programmer will practice it
    (differently).  And no one will know just what it is.
>
That paragraph is taken from a paper written more than 40 years
ago.

>
Finding the author of the quote is left as an exercise to the
reader :-)

The paper was widely cited, and many of the papers that cited
it quoted that paragraph.  It's disappointing that many of
those who quoted the paragraph didn't understand what the
paper was getting at.

The prediction came true with a vengeance, even more than
the author expected.  Most of what has been written about object
oriented programming was done by people who didn't understand it.
>
Two more quotes, these from Alan Kay:
>
    I invented the term "Object Oriented Programming," and C++
    is not what I had in mind.
>
    Though Smalltalk's structure allows the technique now known
    as data abstraction to be easily (and more generally)
    employed, the entire thrust of its design has been to
    supersede the concept of data and procedures entirely;  to
    replace these with the more generally useful notions of
    activity, communication, and inheritance.

>
In the finishing part of the second quate Alan Key is wrong.
"Notions of activity, communication and inheritance" are less
rather than more generally useful than algorithms (procedures)
and their accompanying data structures.

I think the view being expressed is that "Notions of activity,
communication and inheritance" are more useful in large-scale
systems.  It is not that the concepts of data and procedures
are not useful at all, but that they don't scale up well.  Alan
Kay said this: there is not much difference between 10 lines of
Smalltalk and 10 lines of Pascal; but 20 pages of Smalltalk is
more like 50 pages of Pascal (approximate quote, taken from a
memory nearly 50 years old).

But that does not answer original question, so O.T.

His comment about activity and so forth is very much relevant to
his view of what "object-oriented programming" means (to the
extent that I understand what he has said and was trying to say
in that comment).