Re: back to: improving rpg. was: what is object oriented programming

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Booth Martin wrote:
> Even the requests are helpful to the learning process.  The whole concept of
> OO has never gotten through so these discussions are  helping to define the
> concept to me.  What is the difference between OO and black boxing? As with
> Date fields and adddur and subdur for example.  .It'd seem to me that adding
> 1 year, 2 months, and 6 days to February 27th and getting the correct answer
> back even in a leap year is about as OO as one can get?

I think one problem is over the very definition of what OO is. 
You'll never really get a good definition of OO by looking at OO 
programming languages. For instance, compare specific languages: 
Some have multiple inheritance, others single inheritance. Some have 
compile-time type checking, others run-time. Some allow the 
overloading of operators, others not. And so on.

Regarding your specific example, that's really no different than 
adding 1 thousand 2 hundred and 6 to some number, which is clearly 
not OO.

Perhaps the term "OO" really is just a buzzword, like "AI"? That 
brings up a point I made in a previous point, the more you 
understand about OO, the less relevant specific OO language features 
seem to be. (At least, that's the case for me!) For arguments sake, 
perhaps the best indicator of "OO-ness" is its ability to support 
the implementation of design patterns, which fundamentally is what 
OO really is all about.

Which brings me back to my original point. Let's discuss specific 
RPG enhancements on their own particular merits, and not because 
they fit some definition of "OO".

Cheers! Hans