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From: xtbjh@levels.sait.edu.au (behoffski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Object Oriented Programming ?
Message-ID: <16398.283d5af6@levels.sait.edu.au>
Date: 24 May 91 08:57:02 GMT
References: <1991May22.134354.11444@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Organization: University of South Australia
Lines: 38

In article <1991May22.134354.11444@mlb.semi.harris.com>, bie@solman.mlb.semi.harris.com (Ben Eaton) writes:
> 
>         I know I am going to get flamed for asking this but I am going to 
>      ask it any way.
> 
>           QUESTION -        What is "Object Oriented Programming"?
> 

A fine question: you will not get flamed.  I suspect that my answer 
here, which leans heavily on philosophy, may get flamed.  

Object Oriented is a buzzword, in the same league as "fourth-generation 
language" and "structured programming".  If a product is decribed using 
such a buzzword, it usually means the following:

	- nearly everybody agrees that X is a problem at the moment
	- Y is a buzzword coined by someone to describe their solution to X
	- much noise is made saying that Y is a Good Thing
	- everybody adopts the term Y to bolster their image

This viewpoint is more than a little cynical, of course, yet I claim that 
it can be applied to "structured programming" and "4th-generation language" 
and will eventually be seen to apply to "object oriented."  

I would argue that the evolution of software has followed something 
close to the following:

	- start off with lines of code and individual variables 
	- invent structured programming to control masses of lines of code
	- invent data structuring to control masses of bytes of data 
	- bolt object oriented constructions on top of data structure and 
		code structure to try and give improved interfaces

Your comments are welcome (I'm reasonably flameproof!)

-- 
Brenton Hoff (behoffski)  | Senior Software Engineer | My opinions are mine
xtbjh@Levels.UniSA.edu.au | AWA Transponder          | (and they're weird).