Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

On 7/7/2011 8:38 AM, john e wrote:

Mostly it's better to do composition, instead of subclassing.Also, subclassing breaks encapsulation.

Yup. I've said that many times over the years.

Also FYI (you started pissing), i have lots of experience with OO and procedural.I have years experience in Smalltalk (90's) and Java.To experience real adaptability, try Smalltalk.

Let's avoid words like "pissing" shall we? And who hasn't programmed Smalltalk? ;) I just hated saving the entire workspace, but that's ancient history.

You are right however, that for bigger systems, you really need a static language, not dynamic ones.
But interesting that you say that OO programs are difficult to change, and difficult to understand.This (adaptability and understandability) is the prime selling point of OO.So it's all BS then...

It's my opinion. Minor changes are easy in OO, and extending an architecture is easy to do. Major changes are hard. If your initial concept of the class hierarchy is wrong, everything has to change. Been there, done that many times. The hype for OO is not BS, it's just not a silver bullet. I think OO languages perform better at modeling static problems like generating HTML, and most businesses are dynamic because their business rules change often.

In the end, it's your decision. You want to program your business in OO, go ahead. I still think I'll end up with a better, faster, more maintainable MRP system in less time programmng in RPG than in Java. And I'm not the only one who thinks procedural languages have their uses, Java may be the number one language, but C is number 2, and there ain't no objects in C.

Joe