POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Tell me it isn't so! : Re: Tell me it isn't so! Server Time
5 Sep 2024 23:16:52 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Tell me it isn't so!  
From: Invisible
Date: 22 Jul 2009 05:13:30
Message: <4a66d83a@news.povray.org>
>> Just because Java is OOP done wrong, and C++ is a superset of an 
>> already complicated language, doesn't mean that OOP is inherantly 
>> complex.
> 
> You may be right. The complexity that I see in C++ may derive mainly 
> from C. C,
> in my experience, is a fascinating and addictive language, but it 
> apparently allows,
> maybe encourages, writing code so complex as to be almost 
> undecipherable.

IME, programs written in C are almost always unreadable. But I'm biased. ;-)

> Maybe
> it bequeathed that legacy to C++ and other OOP languages and that it is 
> really foreign to
> OOP. Of course it matters little if OOP is not "inherently" complex if 
> all existing instances
>  are.

You're aware that there are OOP languages which aren't Java or C++, 
right? (For example, Smalltalk, Eiffel, JavaScript, CLOS, just off the 
top of my head.) C++ and Java are both very "impure" variants of the OOP 
vision. Arguably Eiffel is the purest. (And, arguably, Eiffel is quite 
complex - mostly because it provides MI and also generics.)

> And I don't really see the logic in spending
> months preparing to write a program that could be effectively written in 
> a simple language -- if such had survived.

Well now here *is* an interesting point... For small, simple programs, 
unstructured languages allow you to express your ideas as simply and 
directly as possible. The principle problem is that as soon as you start 
trying to write larger programs, they become a mess. This is why 
structured programming (of which OOP is simply a logical extension) were 
invented.

The question is... are any POV-Ray "programs" large enough to benefit 
from the extra structuring? I believe the answer is yes, but it's 
somewhat debatable.


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