"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> I've looked at enough OOP programs. Pov-Ray's current scripting language
>   is easy to use once you learn the syntax. All that the introduction of
> OOP would do
> is to make it more difficult and time consuming to write a workable
> script.

An "OOP-enabled" language need not necessarily look like C++, Java or C#, if
that's what deters you.


> It matters
> little to me if the Pov-Ray source is written in OOP, though I think it
> would be a step
>   backwards or maybe side ways. (In fact it will probably become
> necessary for the source
> code to be written in OOP at least until the fad dies.)

POV-Ray 3.7 *is* already being written using OOP - not because we'd be living in
times of an OO hype, but because it *does* simplify both the development and - a
very important point in this respect - maintenance. As a professional software
developer I'm speaking out of experience here.

Once you've embraced the OO paradigms, you'll no longer wonder whether it's a
step back or sideways - you'll know that it's a step forward.


> What I don't want to see is the scripting language OOPified! As I said
> it already uses "object" with "data
>   members" and "methods", but it doesn't require the complex and (to my
> mind) arcane OOP structure
> and "philosophy".

Granted, some people can really blurp about it.

But if you already see "objects" and "data members" and "methods" in the SDL,
then there isn't much complexity to be added that you haven't seen yet - except
that an SDL with native OOP support would allow to define custom objects, to be
used in just the same way as POV-Ray's built-in primitives.

Also, the blurp can sometimes help to define the language in such a way that it
can be implemented with very compact code. Though I agree that it may be wise
not to force all the blurp that helped during development onto the casual
users.

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