Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

http://blog.dmbcllc.com/2008/05/13/object-oriented-programming-has-failed-us/

by nreece • 18 years ago

24 48 18 years ago

blog.dmbcllc.com

andreyf4• 18 years ago

Meanwhile, back at the lab, we need to come up with a programming environment that most people understand naturally. We need to do usability studies on the languages we develop just like we test applications we develop for users.

Isn't that how Vista was designed? Wouldn't it be a better idea to have a really curious and imaginative person (an artist, if you will) work on the language that will last 100 years?

On the other hand, I think this article borders on a good criticism of Arc: could it be that PG's focus on writing a language is misguided? Maybe it would be a better idea to focus on something more abstract: in particular, on inventing better fundamental representations for our programs (as Alan Kay did, when he thought about OOP)? I'd imagine Paul's response would be that macros -the "blurring of the line" between interpreter and interpreted- is the mind-opening change in representation. Does the problem lie in helping people cross this line?

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

It's also how Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows 95, and most of their precursors were designed. There's just been an acceptance amongst OS designers that testing with real humans is the only way to know if things are actually easy.

Programming languages are unique, however, in that the people building them are often also the users (and the more this is true, the better the language tends to be). C was designed to build UNIX, while ADA was designed for a customer...and we know which one survived.

But, I also simply can't buy the "people understand naturally" logic. People understand very little "naturally"...and even if you include pre-existing knowledge (like English, or spatial skills) in this "natural" knowledge you still end up with a pretty horrendous and limited programming language. Explaining an algorithm in English almost always takes a lot more "code" than writing it in a decent high level language.

andreyf4• 18 years ago

testing with real humans is the only way to know if things are actually easy

Yes, yes, of course, sorry for being unclear - I just meant that we shouldn't rely on design-by-focus-groups or design-by-committee exclusively, that imaginative solutions require creativity, and for that you need someone with taste.

People understand very little "naturally"...

Well, OOP utilizes our spacial skills, at least in the form of all those pretty UML graphs? There is certainly a lot of thinking left to do about how exactly we understand programming languages, both on macro and micro levels - what metaphors we use to understand scope, objects, functional concepts, etc. It's from this thinking that new language designs will arise.

Kaizyn2• 18 years ago

Ada has a pretty impressive record in safety critical systems; something that cannot be said of C. Aircraft software systems and many air traffic control systems in particular are all written in Ada.

thinkcomp• 18 years ago

I don't think this article is particularly well-written. However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases. That's why the Lampshade framework I wrote is purely procedural, and why I'm able to write software on top of it so quickly. Client-side GUI programming is a different story, in my opinion.

In general, just because you're capable of understanding complex, abstract concepts doesn't mean that it's always best to use them.

andreyf4• 18 years ago

For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases.

Agreed. Functional programming seems to make a lot more sense. Fundamentally, isn't a web server just a function f: url -> html? Sure, databases and sessions complicate things, but even in these cases, functional structures seem a lot more elegant (in a mathematical sense) than OOP ones.

swombat• 18 years ago

For any programming, OOP brings some advantages. What you might be decrying is over-the-top abuse of OOP patterns. Certainly, for most programming, abuse of design patterns is unwarranted.

However, taking, as an example, Ruby, which is both a functional and OOP language, the OOP features make the language a lot nicer.

Anyway, that article is completely daft. And I refuse to take any advice about programming from someone who spells "linear" as "linier". Shame there's no down-mod button.

jcromartie• 18 years ago

> However, I do agree with the conclusion. For web-based programming, object oriented programming is simply ridiculous in all but a small number of cases.

I read his conclusion as that object oriented programming has failed us because it is too hard to understand, and we need a new, simpler, more accessible, dumbed-down programming paradigm. He is advocating programming for non-programmers, which has been tried many times before and has always met the worst kind of failure (universal disdain by "real" programmers).

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

I would say we've had it for a while now. Ever seen the things that people on a trading desk do with Excel? Or maybe VB, when they get daring.

Generally something that gets the job done that they want it do.

However, it is not going to be very extensible, no one besides the person who wrote it will be able to understand it (and maybe not even him), they will have no idea what to do if they want it to go faster, or if they need to make it work on the web, or integrate some data feed that doesn't have any easy way to import into Excel, or...

In summary, we have programming for non-programmers, it works as well as can be expected, but sometimes you really, really need a programmer.

davidmathers• 18 years ago

Hacker News Is Failing Us.

This link is currently in the #2 position on the front page. I wonder if the people who up voted it actually read it or just agreed with the thesis?

andreyf4• 18 years ago

I cringed at the comparison to mathematical proofs and the "multidimensional" aspects of programming (whatever that means), but the thesis was good, and I'm interested in how the HN community can expound on it... hence, the upvote.

Kaizyn2• 18 years ago

How is the thesis good? The thesis states: average developers are too dumb to grok object-oriented programming so that some alternative simpler method for data hiding and encapsulation needs to be adopted. Only the really smart people should be allowed to dabble in the dark arts of OOP, and only then if they've been properly mentored by an elite priesthood.

greyman• 18 years ago

Or, we are failing ourselves, but otherwise you are completely right. There is nothing in the article explaining why author thinks that "Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us".

Anyway, this is a good way to trick Hacker News:

1. Write curious title with some programming term in it. 2. Write some random thoughts in the article body mentioning the term. 3. Submit to HN 4. Traffic!

bkovitz• 18 years ago

Actually, the article says that OOP has failed us by not being a good fit to the way most programmers' minds work.

greendestiny3• 18 years ago

Object Orientation failed because it's too hard to understand? I blinked in incredulity. Object Orientation hasn't failed, but we're coming to appreciate its short comings as a sole design paradigm. For C programmers, C++ gave them access to variable execution via polymorphism (without ugly function pointers) and more flexible scoping via classes. In languages that provide first class and anonymous functions polymorphism is a lot less useful and closures provide better scoping flexibility than classes. Languages that have these features make it obvious how restrictive C++ is in binding this functionality in with the type system. In languages like ruby, python, javascript, lisp and smalltalk object orientation serves in its proper place as a type definition system and people use it appropriately. It's only C++ that has failed us.

timr3• 18 years ago

"closures provide better scoping flexibility than classes. Languages that have these features make it obvious how restrictive C++ is in binding this functionality in with the type system."

C++ can/does do anonymous functions (for example, see boost lambda), and can even give you most of what you want from first-class functions and closures (using functors). The parts that you don't get are due mostly to the fact that C++ doesn't have built-in garbage collection. It's a speed limitation, not a type-safety limitation.

Now for my rant: there seems to be a backlash against type safety in this forum that I don't understand. Granted, if all you ever do is develop dinky webapps with your best friends, permissive languages allow for rapid development (mostly because they let you get away with murder). However, once you have more than a few developers and a few tens of thousand lines of code, the benefits of strict typing become rapidly apparent. The chaotic, free-for-all mentality of languages like Ruby is great for rapid prototyping, but it kinda sucks for developing in more formal scenarios.

It may be "harder" to develop with strongly typed languages, but that's usually an indication that you're having to think a bit before you act. That's rarely a bad thing!

greendestiny3• 18 years ago

Well templates do let you do just about everything being a meta-programming language - however libraries rarely use them and they are very complicated to implement yourself.

I've not found static typing to be a big productivity win. I think it disallows a small subset of bugs. Like most people I've been a C++ programmer because it was the highest performance language with the best support for operating and window systems. I'm gleefully looking forward to it playing a smaller and smaller part of my programming work.

DanielBMarkham4• 18 years ago

"there seems to be a backlash against type safety in this forum"

You've said what I've been thinking for many months now.

We've also got a strong contingent of anti-MS ranters.

As to the merits of the article -- there are none. Oddly enough, I can't make a case against his argument because he doesn't have one, save his ultimate realization that it was the language itself. "It came to me in a dream" is a very difficult thing to take issue with.

kingkongrevenge2• 18 years ago

> have more than a few developers and a few tens of thousand lines of code, the benefits of strict typing become rapidly apparent.

The argument is that comprehensive test suites can substitute for strict typing. I don't buy it as practical, but that's the argument, and I can at least see the reasoning.

The other point is that you can avoid tens of thousands of lines of code and lots of developers in dynamic languages. You're way more likely to keep the thing in a form where two or three guys have it all in their heads and can keep it small and well factored. Strict typing is critical when you're making changes to code you don't understand really well. But you're more likely to understand all the code really well when it's small and you're on a small team.

scott_s• 18 years ago

Boost::lambda is a poor substitute for an actual lambda. Every time I have attempted to use it in a non-trivial way, I gave up because writing a one-off function object was clearer and required less code. (Albiet spread out more.)

Your claim that you can achieve everything in C++ misses the point. Sure, I can write lots of function objects every time I want to apply a function to a data structure (and I do), but I also have to write a lot of tedious code to do it. That tedious code increases the size of my code base, which increases the likelihood of errors and its cognitive load. You can write object-oriented programs using ANSI C, but your code base is going to be much larger than if you did it in a language with actual OO support.

When a programming concept has first-class support in a language, programs that use that concept are going to be shorter, clearer, and less likely to have bugs related to that concept's implementation.

Luckily, true anonymous function support will be a part of C++0x.

raganwald• 18 years ago

"Object Orientation failed because it's too hard to understand? I blinked in incredulity"

With great respect, I suggest: If you know what a closure is, you may have trouble understanding how OO is difficult to understand for many other people. The kind of people who have never heard of a closure, and whose eyes glaze over as you try to explain that a closure is an inside-out object and an objct is an inside-out closure.

Xichekolas2• 18 years ago

The fact that the guy thinks OOP is the pinnacle of the dark art of programming doesn't bode well for his credibility on the topic of designing programming paradigms.

I can't even fathom what would be difficult to understand about OOP, unless, like I suspect, he is forcing the Kingdom of Nouns onto a problem that isn't well suited for it.

softwarejim• 18 years ago

I can't get passed the spelling and grammer mistakes personally

yan• 18 years ago

"I can't get passed the spelling and grammer mistakes personally"

*grammar

jraines• 18 years ago

*past

aggieben4• 18 years ago

  I really hate to say this, as much as I like object
  oriented programming but, I really think we might be better 
  off if we went back to procedural programming for the bulk 
  of the applications that we write and left the object 
  oriented stuff to people who really understand it and for 
  problems that can not be solved any other way.

  Meanwhile, back at the lab, we need to come up with a 
  programming environment that most people understand 
  naturally.  We need to do usability studies on the 
  languages we develop just like we test applications we 
  develop for users.  Instead of trying to simplify what we 
  are already doing, which continues to provide solutions 
  that only programmers understand, we need to provide 
  solutions that are no longer programmer centric.

Isn't this what we used to call Visual Basic?

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

It seems to be natural to do GUI-centric programming as in Visual Basic. People like attaching ideas to things that they can see. I think that the real problem is that there is an Impedance Mismatch between current GUIs and the domain. Once we have solved this, then the natural way to program won't conflict so drastically with good Object Oriented practices.

I'm not sure if we can get there before we reach the level of GUIs in Minority Report, but I think we won't need quite all of that.

edw519• 18 years ago

"...and left the object oriented stuff to people who really understand it and for problems that can not be solved any other way."

And an example of such a problem would be...?

The single biggest problem with "language war" threads like this is that people actually believe this is the "only way". "Better way"? Maybe. "Only way"? Hardly.

Anything you can do in your language (object oriented or not), I can do in mine. Maybe not as slick, but it can be done.

bporterfield• 18 years ago

I find it very hard to agree with thesis when there is absolutely no backing information about how OO programming is "hard". What are the difficulties people are having with OO? How can I take this article seriously when it's nothing more than a statement followed by some fluff followed by a few half-thought suggestions. Who are these 'people these people who 'really understand' OO programming?

Am I one of them?

Are you?

How are we to know with no example of HOW OO is hard? What exactly is so hard about it? Class Apple extends Fruit. apple = new Apple(). apple.eat(). Makes sense to me. How are people using it wrong? Is the real issue that people don't understand when to use it?

Here's a similar article:

Playing poker is hard. A lot of people really don't understand how to play poker. People that play poker should stop, and start playing go fish. They should leave poker to the professionals that understand poker. All poker books should now become go fish books.

Object Oriented Programming has Failed Us

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