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From: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Guthery slams OOP in latest DDJ
Message-ID: <2664@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 89 01:43:34 GMT
Reply-To: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 39


I'm not an OOP programmer, but I read a real convincing argument in the
latest Doctor Dobb's Journal #158, "Are the Emporer's New Clothes Object
Oriented?", pp. 80-86 by Scott Guthrey.  

He says a lot of things, but one quote: "Stripped of its fancy jargon,
an object is a lexically-scoped subroutine with multiple mutiple entry
points and persistent state.  OOP has been around since subroutines were
invented in the 1940s.  Objects were fully supported in the early
programming languages AED-0, Algol, and Fortran II.  OOP was, however,
regarded as bad programming style by Fortran aficionados". 

And more: "...the programmer is invited to pass the cost of expedience
onto the user of the system.  This wholesale sacrificing of runtime
efficiency to programmer's convenience, this emphasis on the ease with
which code is generated to the exclusion of the quality, usability, and
maintainability of that code, is not found in any production programming
environment with which I am familiar.  Let's not forget the Intel
432...which was OOP in silicon, and it failed because it was just too
slow.  If we couldn't make OOP efficient in hardware, why do we think we
can make it efficient when we emulate it in software?"

And the conclusion: "OOP runs counter to much prevailing programming
practice and experience: in allocating and controlling software costs,
in modularity, in persistent state, in reuse, in interoperability, and
in the separation of data and program.  Running counter to the
prevailing wisdom does not, of course, automatically make an innovation
suspect but neither does it automatically recommend it.  To date, in my
opinion, advocates of OOP have not provided us with either the
qualitative arguments or the quantitative evidence we need to discard
the lessons painfully learned during the first 40 years of programming". 

Any comments?

-- 
O------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large, cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton NY 13901
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .