Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c++:6530 comp.object:960 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cimshop!davidm From: cimshop!davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.object Subject: Code Reuse (was Re: Inheritance vs. Composition) Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 90 22:06:34 GMT References: <10465@alice.UUCP> <136@dumbcat.UUCP> Sender: davidm@cimshop.UUCP Organization: Consilium Inc., Mountain View, California. Lines: 36 In-reply-to: marc@dumbcat.UUCP's message of 14 Feb 90 02:24:58 GMT In article <136@dumbcat.UUCP> marc@dumbcat.UUCP (Marco S Hyman) writes: In article [I] write: Instead of a design model to follow, the approach seems to be more of "do what seems right programmatically" and the design will take care of itself. You start out trying to follow the right principles but end up satisfying the customer. That is, when the ultimate goal is to ``finish the damn thing and make it work'' you tend to do ``what seems right programmatically.'' A quote I stole from Jon Krueger (forgive me, Jon :-) in comp.databases who borrowed it from Knuth: Knuth (loosely): more evil has been done in the name of performance than any other area. My message meant to suggest that this seems to be programmers' attitudes to developing an "object-oriented" system, not that programmers were being forced into this mode by (forgive me) "real-world" constraints. The attitude that Marco expresses is a valid one for the programmer on the line, but, when talking about models for inheritance and composition, its too early. In a previous article, Dag Bruck pointed out the differences in the "American" and "European" attitude to code reuse. One of Bjarne Stroustrup's original goals for C++ was to reverse the trend of 80% new code and 20% old code for new projects. This would mean heavy code reuse, yet there appears to be no more facilities for code reuse in C++ then there would be in C except in the definition of the model that C++ follows. The problem is seems to be that this model is either not clearly defined or clearly understood or both. -- =================================================================== David Masterson Consilium, Inc. uunet!cimshop!davidm Mt. View, CA 94043 =================================================================== "If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"