Re: What databases have taught me

JOG wrote:
> - I started life as a procedural programmer.
> - I adopted OO and soon got the 'aha' click described by R. Martin.
> - I spent years coding large OO projects, with beautiful, elegant
> architectures.
> - I spent further years practically gnawing my arm off attempting to
> adapt my perfect OO designs as requirements inevitably shifted and
> exceptions arose.
> - I finally realised that my 'aha' was utterly illusionary, and that my
> code, being OO, was inevitably and irrecovably imprisoned in a
> hierarchical strait-jacket
>

I think a distinction between macro and micro-OO needs to be made. At a macro level OO may be as good or bad as any other method of structuring code. At a micro level OO works extremely well. Somewhere in the middle there's a crossover point and it's not always clear where that point is.

   Things like "devices" or "windows" or "customers" can be reasonable classes in a hierarchy but at the top level things are not as clear.

> OO is hierarchy. Enforcing a hierarchy where none exists is an utterly
> dire and destructive artifice.

Exactly, hierarchy where hierarchy exists.

All this, of course, is well known since the very early days of OO. It just seems impossible to learn unless you go through the above-mentioned stages.

Andrew Received on Fri Jun 23 2006 - 17:47:21 CEST