Re: It's That Time Again! The 2002 RPG Enhancement Poll

Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) wrote:
> <snip>This is a good idea, not because it *might* get us a little bit of
> the way towards OO (which I don't think is a good idea for RPG,
> BTW), but because of the issue of name-space collision, as
> demonstrated by your example.
> </snip>
>
> I may be applying the name OO incorrectly then, because I strongly think
> that RPG needs to be more OO.  What I mean to say is that OO languages have
> much better capabilities than what RPG currently offers when you want to
> develop more abstract systems and develop for reuse.  The addition of being
> able to overload (which is on the ballot) will be incredibly great, and this
> would be one of the things that I am talking about when saying RPG needs to
> be more OO.  I know everyone and their mother has a different definition for
> OO so I will make sure to clarify from now on.
>
> When you say OO is a bad place for RPG why is that?  Just wondering.
>
> If somebody tells me to just drop RPG and use Java if I want OO I won't
> listen to them because there is some stuff that is easier to do in RPG than
> Java, and it is hard to give up how close RPG is to the OS, IMO.  That is
> why if RPG could gain some of the OO functionality (whatever that may mean
> to you) I feel would be a step in the right direction and make RPG's life
> more permanent.

Well, if you do a web search (or a search on iseriesnetwork.com, or
some other simliar forum), you might find my previous rants on the
subject.

The gist of my concern is that OO is best handled by an OO language.
  If you want to see what an OO RPG might look like, just compare
C++ to C.  With that type of language, it's hard to resist the
temptation and use procedural programming techniques instead of OO
techniques.

Java is not your only choice for OO.  In many ways, Java is not much
better than C++.  Personally, I prefer the "typeless" interpreted OO
languages, such as Python, which provide much cleaner and easier to
understand object models.  Strongly typed compiled OO languages
(like C++ and Java) just have too much excess baggage, in my opinion.

As I mentioned earlier, if you want to apply OO techniques in RPG,
think about procedure pointers, and then decide which of the
enhancement poll items might make an OO design easier to implement
in RPG.

Cheers!  Hans