Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

On 7/7/2011 4:10 AM, john e wrote:

This is not correct, OO has nothing to do with flow.
An OO language has constructs which help with encapsulation, or "information hiding".Not much more, but nothing less.You can program "procedural" if you want, in Java, whatever that means.If you mean "imperative", there is no difference (you can make one big main method if you want).

It's far too early in the morning to argue about semantics. Procedural programming has definite differences in flow control over OO programming. It's not the language; as you note, you can program procedurally in Java. However, in a procedural language there's traditionally less concern about creating hierarchies of classes than there is in OO. And it's those hierarchies that control the flow of the program. You can call it encapsulation, but the problem is that with an OO language you often have to dig deeply into the hierarchy to understand the flow whereas with a procedural language it's traditionally easier to find a specific line of code.

The point is that I find it a lot easier to react to major external forces in a procedural language. In an OO environment, if it turns out that your class hierarchy is no longer valid, changing the fundamental class hierarchy is a major undertaking (heck, renaming a class is almost impossible - that's why we still have the AS400 class in JTOpen!). Whereas in a procedural language, it's often as simple as grafting together a few bits from different programs, adding some new functionality, and calling the new program.

My point: procedural languages react better to stress than OO languages. And that's purely my opinion after many years of working with both. Your mileage may vary <smile>.

Joe