OOP for novices

> Scott, after I finished my email last night I thought it over and
> realized that I wasn't being very clear about what I think the tea
> analogy covers.

<Snip out godd description of Procedural .vs. OO pgmming>

> The point being, the programmer trying to create the drink tea
> program needn't be concerned with all this. All of the methods he
> needs are prebuilt somewhere. He is just building a program to
> use those methods.

Amen - thought that's what I said, but I probably said it wrong in my
post :)  And thanks for the polymorph explanation (in one of your
other post) - I tried to think of a good way to express that concept,
but (like I said) my knowledge of this stuff is more conceptual/
thoretical than any practical developement experience.

Just curious though - based on your posts and some other responses,
wouldn't you say that OO developers shake out into 2 groups (or
maybe wearing 2 hats might be a better way to put it) - the "Class &
Objects" designers and the "Application" designers.  The C&O guys 
create classes like "Beverage machine", for which they may or may
not use OO laguages and/or pre-existing classes - point is, somewhere
down at the bottom (or top?) of the class heirarchy there stiill exists
simple step-by-step code (dare I say it - procedural code!) to tell the
CPU what to do when a given method for an instance of "Beverage
Machine" gets fired.  On the other hand, the Apps guys don't (as you
say) give a hoot how "Beverage Machines" do what they do - they just
care about using "Beverage Machines" and whatever other Lincoln
Log/Lego/Tinker Toy pre-built pieces they need to get the cup of
tea/coffee/whatever out of their app.  The C&O guy and the Apps guy
may be one and the same person - but once I've worn my C&O hat &
developed a "Beverage machine" I know works (presuming no-one else
has done it for me - hey one can buy OO evironments that come
w/hundred's of pre-packaged object classes, right?), I then slip on my
Apps hat to blissfully develop my "cup of tea" app w/o worrying about
the underlying code.  Whatcha tink?

Scott Cornell
Mercy Information Systems
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