Ask HN: What's wrong with procedural programming?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1220517

by wenchuan • 16 years ago

8 9 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Without these OO stuff, C is still one of (if not sole) most popular programming language, and numerous complicated projects are written in C. So what's wrong with procedural programming? Is C++ really better than C?

noonespecial• 16 years ago

Try this:

So what's wrong with assembly? Is C really better than assembly?

Each has its place for certain task. Languages let you abstract away different things and therefor think different kinds of thoughts while programming. Procedures add a whole new dimension to subroutines. OO adds a whole new dimension to procedures. Closures and functional programming add a whole new way to structure thought and code.

Would it be a good idea to use C to write a timing routine for a micro controller? Or to use assembly to write a gui?

You use the right level of abstraction (through the use of the right language) to think the right thoughts for the task at hand. Experience teaches you when to use what.

If you stubbornly stick to a non-object oriented approach when you should have used one, you'll likely end up reinventing a subset of object orientation anyway, probably badly.

wenchuan• 16 years ago

Thanks a lot. So I guess real-world development involve lots of OO idea.

roundsquare• 16 years ago

I think its best summed up by a quote from some Perl book I read (sorry, don't remember which one).

"Programming languages differ not in what they allow you to do, but in what they make it easy for you to do."

scorpioxy• 16 years ago

Nothing wrong with it.

I am not sure you're asking the right question. If you need a language that is close to the machine(but not assembly), then you go with C. If you need the OO concepts, you go with C++. Mind you, whenever you start using abstractions such as OO, you start to get away from the machine.

You can still use C++ to do procedural programming. So that's not the problem. Just that for some projects, using OO concepts to model the problem domain makes more sense.

Use whatever is right for the problem at hand.

chanux• 16 years ago

You need to read this http://web.mac.com/jimbokun/iWeb/Site/Blog/AB35C167-7755-411...

pmccool• 16 years ago

It's not just C. A lot of procedural code is written in perl, for example. It's true that languages that force you to write procedural code are relatively rare, but languages that force you to write OO are by no means the rule.

IME, OO sometimes works, sometimes not. It's not necessarily about getting close to the hardware, either.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

Instead of going down this same road yet again, I've got a better question for you:

I can pull out my C++ compiler and write straight C (mostly)

What do you call that? C? C++? If I don't use classes in my C++, is it C? Or, conversely, if I develop a complicated module structure in C, does that make it C++?

subud• 16 years ago

C is probably better for writing cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) code than C++. See Linus Torvalds comments:

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

On the other hand, large corporations probably prefer OO programming. Paul Graham has some good quotes:

"Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way"

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

"At big companies, software tends to be written by large (and frequently changing) teams of mediocre programmers. Object-oriented programming imposes a discipline on these programmers that prevents any one of them from doing too much damage."

http://www.paulgraham.com/noop.html

humbledrone• 16 years ago

The fact that C is the most popular programming language is not a good argument for procedural programming, because it is quite common to use OO techniques with C. In fact, most of the C projects that I have worked with use OO techniques in some form. For instance, look at the Linux kernel. There are plenty of structures that include function pointers, which in practice is very similar to inheritance. Also, consider the UNIX concept of a "file"; that's OO design, pure and simple.

I wouldn't say that C++ is "better" than C, but for certain tasks I think it is easier to use. Consider the C++ inheritance model; sure, you can do the same thing in C, but unless you choose a common convention, each new developer will have to learn your way of doing it. With C++, inheritance works in a uniform way, so a new developer doesn't have to guess at how you did it.

With that said, I think that there is something to be said for the simplicity of C, versus more complicated languages like C++. It is a bitch to learn C++, and some of the most unreadable messes I've seen were written in C++. So I think there's certainly an argument for C, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether it is OO or not.

Ask HN: What's wrong with procedural programming?

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