Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news
From: mlanett@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Mark Lanett)
Subject: Re: OOP--What do you think?
Message-ID: <1991Apr11.184946.3912@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: mlanett@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Mark Lanett)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
References: <1991Apr10.210516.25812@rice.edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 18:49:46 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <1991Apr10.210516.25812@rice.edu>, koops@elf.rice.edu (Ryan Richard
Koopmans) writes:
> I recently purchased THINK C 4.0.  When I looked at their
> object oriented implementation of the Mac interface, I was
> more than a little bit confused.  I've written lots of Mac
> applications before, and I'm comfortable with the traditional
> procedural kind of Mac programming.
> 
> What I want to know is, is OOP the wave of the future in
> programming or just a passing fad?  Is it worth learning
> a new way of programming just to use the TCL?
> 
> Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I like the straight procedural
> way.  In all the message passing and things, I feel that the
> programmer gets too far away from the machine and works on a
> too abstract level.

I'm converting NCSA GelReader 1.2 to a MacApp version. The original is 20,000
lines of C. The MacApp version is 3000 lines and has most of the interface
and functionality. It'll be done before 5000 lines. This reduction is almost
entirely due to not having to deal with the interface because MacApp does
it for me. Having used MacApp, writing 4 times as much code as necessary
is ridiculous just to manage windows, mouse tracking and undo-able commands.
I'm using their (Apple's) code to implement the interface and most of the
code I write is actually adding functionality to my program, rather than
teaching it how to auto-scroll. Furthermore, it's *very* easy to modify my
program, which is not true of GelReader 1.2 or any other toolbox program.
There are some definite disadvantages to MacApp (like it's obscenely long
compile times and high compile-time memory requirements) but over time these
hardware restrictions will go away. We will still need tools that make programming
easier, however, and OOP is one of them.
--
//-----------------------------------------------------
Mark Lanett, mark-lanett@uiuc.edu
NCSA, Software Tools Group, mlanett@ncsa.uiuc.edu