Re: Why is OO Popular?

From: Eric Kaun (ekaun_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 05/04/04 

Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 13:03:01 GMT

"Jeff Brooks" <jeff_brooks@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:qlBkc.306859$Pk3.256340@pd7tw1no...
> cstb wrote:
>
> > Jeff Brooks:
> >
> >>... Actually, i think OO is the way people actually think.
> >
> > There appears to be a relationship, yes.
> > However, people are capable of thinking in ways that are much
> > richer than the results obtained by orienting on Objects alone.
>
> Are you sure?
>
> The research that created Smalltalk was done by looking at how very
> young children interact and think about the world and they based the GUI
> + Smalltalk on that (the first gui was made by this research group).
> This research allows us to understand the basics of understanding
> because they looked at the primitive thoughts of people.

This is just great - having advanced philosophy, math, logic, linguistics,
and science over thousands of years, it's time to base our computer systems
on the interactions of young children.

Should we introduce CPU nap times as well?

> For example:
>
> To interact with a thing you have to identify it. Children can identify
> things by pointing at them even if they don't know the word for it. This
> resulted in a pointing device being created called the mouse which would
> allow people to point at what they want to use. All access to objects in
> Smalltalk are done via references so there is a uniform way to "point"
> at an object in code.

And this is inadequate. A HUGE amount of code is devoted to "finding"
objects when you DON'T have a pointer handy - in other words, queries
against the mass of objects, based on various attributes. If all you have is
pointers, how do you distinguish the values they point to (directly or
indirectly)? Of course the values matter - why then waste the time
traversing networks of pointers, when the computer should be able to find
what you want based on your logical criteria?

> Children can't read well, but they can identify shapes and understand
> how to move things. So they concluded making an interface based on
> shapes and moving them is more natural than text interfaces.

Natural is not always better. Toilets are unnatural, as are clothes. I
wouldn't want to do without either, and would certainly not want my
coworkers to give them up.

> Allowing things in a computer that are different to behave in similar
> ways allows people to learn them faster and those things feel more
> natural.

So everything has the "doYerThang(Object whatever)" method?

> This is why actions like opening a document is done in the same
> way no matter what type of document it is in a GUI. The concept of
> allowing different things to behave in similar ways effects both the GUI
> and the programming language.
>
> I think people can think in more complex ways as they get older but that
> doesn't mean they don't think in an object oriented way.

And it doesn't mean they do. We got along well for many years without OO,
and in fact failed to fully explore functional and logical programming (and
even relations) in any commercially significant way.

> Children don't
> understand logic, but they understand objects and classifications. I
> think people can learn logic but i think we understand it by
> understanding things, and classifications.

No, that's not true. Think predicates, and much opens up to you.

> Another way of putting it is we can program different types of languages
> using object oriented languages. That doesn't mean that OO isn't at the
> core of the new languages.

Yes, it does. What is it Guy Steele said about LISP? "If you program in X,
you have X programs. If you program in LISP, you have any language you
like." Sorry, can't cough it up right now, but that's the spirit of it.

- erk

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