Someone told me that the next version of Pov-Ray would be OOP. Horrors! 
Another
  useful and fun thing lost to EEP. Another triumph of the EPP! (It 
seems to me that
the Pov-Ray scripting language already makes more intelligent use of 
"objects" than OOP.) Will we
next see Microsoft Visual Pov-Ray.Net along with Microsoft Pov-Ray 
Development Systems?

Alas, Alas, Tell me it isn't so.

David

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns wrote:
> Someone told me that the next version of Pov-Ray would be OOP. Horrors! 
> Another
>  useful and fun thing lost to EEP. Another triumph of the EPP! (It seems 
> to me that
> the Pov-Ray scripting language already makes more intelligent use of 
> "objects" than OOP.) Will we
> next see Microsoft Visual Pov-Ray.Net along with Microsoft Pov-Ray 
> Development Systems?
> 
> Alas, Alas, Tell me it isn't so.

1. It isn't so.

2. What would be so bad about this being true?

3. What the hell is EEP?

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> 2. What would be so bad about this being true?

POV-Ray.NET, I dunno. It has a nice ring to it.

The next POVRay will be multi-threaded, but use the same SDL we know and 
love.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Someone told me that the next version of Pov-Ray would be OOP. Horrors!
> Another
>   useful and fun thing lost to EEP. Another triumph of the EPP! (It
> seems to me that
> the Pov-Ray scripting language already makes more intelligent use of
> "objects" than OOP.) Will we
> next see Microsoft Visual Pov-Ray.Net along with Microsoft Pov-Ray
> Development Systems?
>
> Alas, Alas, Tell me it isn't so.
>
> David

Why do you associate OOP with .Net?

Did you know that you can program OOP with functional or imperative languages?
That it's a design philosophy more than a language feature?

Besides, there are already integrated modellers and development environments for
POV-Ray.  None from MS (yet), but they are there ;)

....Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

> Why do you associate OOP with .Net?

Needless complexity.
> 
> Did you know that you can program OOP with functional or imperative languages?
> That it's a design philosophy more than a language feature?
Seems to be both.
> 
> Besides, there are already integrated modellers and development environments for
> POV-Ray.  None from MS (yet), but they are there ;)


None from MS and not exclusively from MS. IDE's themselves are great 
tools. We probably need more.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> 
> 2. What would be so bad about this being true?
It would be too complex to be usable by ordinary folk (i.e. me).
> 
> 3. What the hell is EEP?
Extremely Elite Programming (my coinage)

EPP -Elite Programmer Priesthood, although you didn't ask.
(smile-- how does one put those smiley icons in?)

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Chambers wrote:

> > Why do you associate OOP with .Net?

> Needless complexity.

  That didn't answer the question at all.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Someone told me that the next version of Pov-Ray would be OOP. Horrors! 

  Could you please elaborate what's so horrible in object-oriented
programming?

  The whole idea of object-oriented programming is to make it *easier* to
write programs, especially compared to straightforward imperative/structured
programming (as the SDL is currently).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 21-7-2009 18:04, David H. Burns wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> 
>>
>> 2. What would be so bad about this being true?
> It would be too complex to be usable by ordinary folk (i.e. me).
>>
>> 3. What the hell is EEP?
> Extremely Elite Programming (my coinage)
> 
> EPP -Elite Programmer Priesthood, although you didn't ask.
> (smile-- how does one put those smiley icons in?)
> 
The original way by using colons and brackets. If you have an recent 
newsreader it will substitute the smileys.

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Invisible wrote:

> > 
> > 2. What would be so bad about this being true?
> It would be too complex to be usable by ordinary folk (i.e. me).

  And exactly how do you know this?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Someone told me that the next version of Pov-Ray would be OOP. Horrors!

Definitely not: The next version to come - POV-Ray 3.7 - will feature just the
same SDL as 3.6, except where functionality has changed and require adaptation
of the SDL.

Replacing the SDL has been discussed for POV-Ray 4 though, including the idea to
provide much better support for OO programming. But that's still some time to
go, and to my knowledge no concrete decisions have been made yet.

(BTW, shame on you - this topic's off topic here... :P)

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > 2. What would be so bad about this being true?
> It would be too complex to be usable by ordinary folk (i.e. me).

Not if it's done right.

It might be too complex for ordinary folk to make use of its *full power*, but
simply coding a scene should be no tad more difficult than it is ATM.

To the contrary: It might allow programmers to write more sophisticated "macro"
suites and make them much easier to use for ordinary folk.

(All provided POV-Ray gets a custom-tailored language; with any "off-the-shelf"
language I've seen so far, you'd likely be right: It would become unnecessarily
cumbersome.)


I can understand your resentments: When I first came into contact with anything
officially labeled "OOP", I just thought "WTF?!" - that was Borland's "Turbo
Vision" for Turbo Pascal 6. It looked like it made programming absurdly ugly
and complex, and the section on OOP in the manuals started out in a way that
didn't seem to make any sense to me.

Next time I was introduced to OOP, however, I found that I had been using OOP
concepts already, and what was labeled "OOP" were actually just language
features that made it simpler to implement them, and more-or-less useful
libraries making use of these.

As for the ugliness, I found that most of it was the particular ugliness of the
Turbo Vision framework - or rather actually Borland's idea of how they should
be used - and had nothing to do with the language's OOP extensions in general,
and the residual ugliness was due to these extensions having been designed into
an already-existing language.

Another reason for people experiencing OOP as particularly complex is that many
people encounter it in the context of graphical user interfaces and stuff like
that (a good deal of Turbo Vision, too, was dedicated to windowing user
interfaces, though they were text-based back then); often the high complexity
of the user interfaces is then wrongly associated with OOP in general.


BTW, a work colleague of mine, who *started* his programming carreer with OOP,
was struck with horror when he first made contact with classical procedural
programming...


The bottom line is this: If the language is designed with care, supporting OOP
will allow "wizards" to write libraries with very elegant interfaces, without
interfering with the ease of general scene coding.

Post a reply to this message

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. 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.) I am unlikely to 
look much at the source
  code. I looked at it earlier because I wanted to try to do something 
that I thought couldn't be done
current Pov-Ray --make a "mirror" surface whose "reflection" is 
controlled by a supplied
algorithm. I now think that this can be done (at least to some extent) 
with "normals".

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".

David


Warp wrote:

>   And exactly how do you know this?
>

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> It might be too complex for ordinary folk to make use of its *full power*, but
> simply coding a scene should be no tad more difficult than it is ATM.
> 
That could be true, but I'm skeptical. The "full power" users would 
dominate and the
rest of us would be sidelined, as has happen in programming in general. 
But maybe the
old versions would be left for the rest of us and not be scuttled as in 
programming.

:) Does this work?

David

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
> 
>>> Why do you associate OOP with .Net?
> 
>> Needless complexity.
> 
>   That didn't answer the question at all.
> 
True I didn't use a complete sentence. Both OOP and .Net programing seem 
needlessly
  complex. My sole experience with .Net is with Microsoft Visual 
Basic.Net, version
2008 and the first version. I really don't know the significance of the 
".net" extension
attached to a program name, but I associate it with Microsoft bloat and 
obscurity.

David

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   The whole idea of object-oriented programming is to make it *easier* to
> write programs, especially compared to straightforward imperative/structured
> programming (as the SDL is currently).
> 

That I cannot believe!!

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> (BTW, shame on you - this topic's off topic here... :P)
> 
> 

(Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, I 
think, is that
this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.

So I'll apologize and go do something more useful.

:) Does my smile work? No need to answer that. I'll read my post.

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   The whole idea of object-oriented programming is to make it *easier* to
> > write programs, especially compared to straightforward imperative/structured
> > programming (as the SDL is currently).
> > 

> That I cannot believe!!

  Well, then I can only say that you are wrong. The whole idea of OOP is
to make programming easier and more manageable. That's why it was invented
in the first place.

  Do you really think a new programming paradigm would be developed and
get widespread if it was *harder* to use than older, ascetic imperative
approaches?

  You seem to have the misconception that in order to write a program in
an object-oriented programming language you need to know the entire language
before you can do anything.

  You are saying that the current SDL is easy to learn. Do you honestly think
that making it object-oriented means removing those easy control structures
such as while-loops and functions?

  And can't you see how limited the current SDL is? For example, how can you
increase the current camera angle by 5 degrees? Or read the pigment of an
existing object at a specific point? Or create a binary search tree? Or remove
an object from an existing union?

  You can't. Why? Because the current SDL is an archaic pile of kludges, one
on top of another. It's limited, inflexible and hard to use for anything
more complicated than simple while-looping.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> On 21-7-2009 18:04, David H. Burns wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:

> The original way by using colons and brackets. If you have an recent 
> newsreader it will substitute the smileys.

Thanks. :) like this or maybe like this :]?

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Do you really think a new programming paradigm would be developed and
> get widespread if it was *harder* to use than older, ascetic imperative
> approaches?
> 
Yes, (though I have no idea what  "ascetic imperative approaches" means) 
such things have
  happened more than once! But I've been ruled off topic again --
which is a good thing, it keeps from wasting my time and yours on my 
soapbox. :)

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   Do you really think a new programming paradigm would be developed and
> > get widespread if it was *harder* to use than older, ascetic imperative
> > approaches?
> > 
> Yes, (though I have no idea what  "ascetic imperative approaches" means) 
> such things have
>   happened more than once!

  Yeah, sure. I'm now convinced that OOP became so widespread regardless
of being significantly harder than imperative programming.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 21-7-2009 23:37, David H. Burns wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> 
>> (BTW, shame on you - this topic's off topic here... :P)
>>
>>
> 
> (Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, I 
> think, is that
> this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.
> 
> So I'll apologize and go do something more useful.
> 
> :) Does my smile work? No need to answer that. I'll read my post.

That you see your smiley does not mean everybody else will.

Post a reply to this message

"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.

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > >   Do you really think a new programming paradigm would be developed and
> > > get widespread if it was *harder* to use than older, ascetic imperative
> > > approaches?
> > >
> > Yes, (though I have no idea what  "ascetic imperative approaches" means)
> > such things have
> >   happened more than once!
>
>   Yeah, sure. I'm now convinced that OOP became so widespread regardless
> of being significantly harder than imperative programming.

Hm - just as a side note here: I thouht *you* were trying to convince *David*?
Just pointing out that his objection against your point makes a poor argument
in favor of his point... that's a rather weak point in itself.

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

> 
> Did you know that you can program OOP with functional or imperative languages?

And conversely, as one of my programming students once said to me in the 
early days of OO, "you can make an OO program look a lot like a 
traditional program"

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Yeah, sure. I'm now convinced that OOP became so widespread regardless
> of being significantly harder than imperative programming.
> 
:)

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:

> That you see your smiley does not mean everybody else will.

Thanks. Did you see it? I did when I read my own post. I don't think it 
shows up in the text in
my "sent" file. These matters get complicated.
:) (smiley ?)

David

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > It might be too complex for ordinary folk to make use of its *full power*, but
> > simply coding a scene should be no tad more difficult than it is ATM.
> >
> That could be true, but I'm skeptical. The "full power" users would
> dominate and the
> rest of us would be sidelined, as has happen in programming in general.

I'm actually quite sure that something like this will happen - except that I'm
more inclined to think that instead of sidelining "OOP retards" (if I may use
such an expression :)) it will instead introduce OOP concepts to them -
provided they are willing, which I think is the major problem at least in your
case. Nobody will ever convince you of the benefits of OOP if you refuse to
give it a try; you won't see its advantages just from reading tutorials and
other people's code.


> :) Does this work?

Does.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

>> That could be true, but I'm skeptical. The "full power" users would
>> dominate and the
>> rest of us would be sidelined, as has happen in programming in general.
> 
> I'm actually quite sure that something like this will happen - 

So am I! More convinced than ever by this discussion!
except that I'm
> more inclined to think that instead of sidelining "OOP retards" (if I may use
> such an expression :)) it will instead introduce OOP concepts to them -
> provided they are willing, which I think is the major problem at least in your
> case. Nobody will ever convince you of the benefits of OOP if you refuse to
> give it a try; you won't see its advantages just from reading tutorials and
> other people's code.

You will pardon me if I resent being forced into something even if it is 
"for my own good".
Those with power, especially those with illegitimate power are always 
forcing someone to do
something "for their own good". So you would take control of a useful 
tool and twist it into
an instrument to force us "retards" into accepting your philosophy!

You have already branded me off topic. So let's leave it at that.

(Frowny)

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns wrote:
> 
> (Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, I
> think, is that
> this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.
> 

On-topic. Your conversation is clearly about Pov-RAY, so it would
naturally fit onto the on-topic groups better than to shit-chatting
off-topic group :-).

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> You will pardon me if I resent being forced into something even if it is
> "for my own good".
> Those with power, especially those with illegitimate power are always
> forcing someone to do
> something "for their own good". So you would take control of a useful
> tool and twist it into
> an instrument to force us "retards" into accepting your philosophy!

First off, sorry for the choice of words; "OOP-retards" was intended to be more
sort of affectionate than anything else, but admittedly ill-suited for this
purpose. I do apologize.

That said, I'm not sure whom you are referring to here with "those with power"
in general, and "those with illegitimate power" in particular. Furthermore, I
have no intention to "take control of a useful tool and twist it into an
instrument to force" anyone into accepting my "philosophy", neither personally
nor otherwise.

Hear yourself talking - as if there was a sinister conspiracy to enforce OOP
onto people, involving some kind of abominable inhumane brainwashing - and as
if I personally was one of the key figures in this plot.

Yes, I personally do advocate going for strong OOP-support with POV-Ray 4 SDL. I
do so as a POV-Ray user, and I do so as a contributing developer.

Yes, I did present a serious proposal for a new, OOP-enabled SDL in the povray 4
newsgroup some months ago.

Yes, being active in the development of POV-Ray 3.7 I *may* happen to personally
get my hands dirty on the code of POV-Ray 4's SDL engine.

However, this is all still far from being decided; and all I was saying here and
now is, *if* the POV-Ray 4 language does go OOP, (1) I guess it will not be as
dramatically incomprehensible to non-OOP people as you seem to expect, (2) I
guess it will be of benefit for, and readily embraced by, the vast majority of
the users, (3) I guess for people who have no OOP experience but the desire to
learn the concepts it will provide a good opportunity to get into it in an easy
fashion, and (4) as for people categorically resenting any OOP exposure,
personally I'd accept the price of them turning their back on POV-Ray, as sad
as that loss would be.


And I'm also saying, try OOP for yourself, *then* judge. Give the concept a
chance before boldly declaring that it is of the devil.

Turning your own argument around, why should a small, radically anti-OOP group
of people (I currently know of exactly *one*), who don't seem to know from own
experience what they're really talking about, impose their categorically
anti-OOP philosophy unto a significantly greater number of users who would
readily embrace OOP out of good experience or an open mindset (I know for sure
of at least a handful to be decidedly pro-OOP, and would expect a poll to turn
up many, many more), forcing them to use a language particularly ill-suited for
their favorite way of programming?

You see, that argument of yours works great both ways round; and at the bottom
line, I'm more than willing to make myself a spokesman of (a) the majority, (b)
people whose arguments are based on personal experience, (c) those with the less
radical mindset, and (d) the solution that would allow both sides to code the
way they personally prefer. *All* these vectors currently seem to point towards
adding OOP-support to the SDL, with only the resentments of what currently
appears to be a radical and very small minority pointing in the opposite
direction.


> You have already branded me off topic. So let's leave it at that.

Sorry if I didn't make it clear enough that was a pure pun.

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
> 
>> Why do you associate OOP with .Net?
> 
> Needless complexity.

 From this, and your other posts, I'm going to assume that you don't 
actually know anything about either OOP or .Net.

OOP does NOT introduce needless complexity; rather, it is a series of 
methodologies that help you manage complexity.  For this reason, the 
most likely place you'll see OOP avoided is in small, simple projects, 
while large (and complex) projects will insist on utilizing OOP 
(otherwise they would be unmanageable).

.Net encompasses a whole series of technologies from Microsoft, one of 
the most prominent being an interpreted bytecode known as CLR (common 
language run-time).  The various languages (such as C# .Net, VB .Net, et 
al) are compiled into this bytecode rather than machine language, which 
is then run by an interpreter.  This is similar to Java, although it is 
not platform independent (there is a platform independent open source 
version, called Mono, which is able to execute many .Net applications).

Along with this bytecode language, comes a large library of functions 
and routines that are accessible from any .Net language.

There are other technologies and features, of course, mostly aimed at 
interoperability of various system components (for instance, LINQ, which 
allows SQL-type queries from languages such as C# and VB).

In all, .Net as a collection of tools allows people to focus on the 
parts of their programs that are truly unique, rather than reinventing 
the wheel with every application.

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   You can't. Why? Because the current SDL is an archaic pile of kludges, one
> on top of another. It's limited, inflexible and hard to use for anything
> more complicated than simple while-looping.

Even while-looping is dangerous for new users of SDL ;)

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

> I really don't know the significance of the ".net" extension
> attached to a program name,

You don't really sound too qualified then to complain about the "needless 
complexity" :-)

Post a reply to this message

>>   The whole idea of object-oriented programming is to make it *easier* to
>> write programs, especially compared to straightforward 
>> imperative/structured
>> programming (as the SDL is currently).
>>
>
> That I cannot believe!!

Why not?

Did you ever try to write a macro in SDL to position or rotate an object 
relative to the camera?  You can't tell me that an OOP version wouldn't be 
simpler!

Post a reply to this message

> (Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, I 
> think, is that
> this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.

No, it really is just the wrong group here.

If you look in the pov4.discussion.general group you will see that this 
subject has already been discussed a lot, so please read through the posts 
there, and if you feel you still have something to add then by all means 
start a new thread.  Nobody is going to flame you for a forbidden topic, I 
assume that the developers want input from as many users as possible when 
deciding what to do for POV4.

Post a reply to this message

>> 2. What would be so bad about this being true?
> It would be too complex to be usable by ordinary folk (i.e. me).

I doubt it.

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. It's 
actually quite a food fit for scene description/construction/inspection.

>> 3. What the hell is EEP?
> Extremely Elite Programming (my coinage)

Yes, well, things like Java are *just a tad* over-hyped, yes... ;-)

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> 
> Yes, I personally do advocate going for strong OOP-support with POV-Ray 4 SDL. I
> do so as a POV-Ray user, and I do so as a contributing developer.
> 
> Yes, I did present a serious proposal for a new, OOP-enabled SDL in the povray 4
> newsgroup some months ago.
> 
> Yes, being active in the development of POV-Ray 3.7 I *may* happen to personally
> get my hands dirty on the code of POV-Ray 4's SDL engine.
> 



So it is so after all
:(

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Did you ever try to write a macro in SDL to position or rotate an object 
> relative to the camera?  You can't tell me that an OOP version wouldn't 
> be simpler!
> 
> 

Yes I have; maybe an OOP version would be simpler. The current SDL is 
not without flaws.
Maybe OOP would magically fix them. I guess I'll find out if I continue 
using Pov-Ray. As I
seem to be the lone objector to the Pov-Ray SDL going OOP, I don't 
suppose there is much
point in my saying more. After all, I'm assured that such changes will 
be for my own good.
:)

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> 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.

This is where I mutter something about functional programming being the 
future, and everybody agrees with me...

Post a reply to this message

clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: iso-8859-1, 19 lines --]

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > > >   Do you really think a new programming paradigm would be developed and
> > > > get widespread if it was *harder* to use than older, ascetic imperative
> > > > approaches?
> > > >
> > > Yes, (though I have no idea what  "ascetic imperative approaches" means)
> > > such things have
> > >   happened more than once!
> >
> >   Yeah, sure. I'm now convinced that OOP became so widespread regardless
> > of being significantly harder than imperative programming.

> Hm - just as a side note here: I thouht *you* were trying to convince *David*?
> Just pointing out that his objection against your point makes a poor argument
> in favor of his point... that's a rather weak point in itself.

  It was just sarcasm. Whether the sarcasm is a strong or weak argument is
irrelevant at this point.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> As I
> seem to be the lone objector to the Pov-Ray SDL going OOP,

I very much doubt that - but it will help your cause if you a) write about 
it in the correct place (ie not this group) and b) explain yourself a bit 
more rather than just "OOP makes things more complex" - because for most of 
us here that is just the opposite of our experiences.

Do you have any alternative ideas for what the POV4 SDL should be like? 
People will certainly discuss them with you in the pov4 group.

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Invisible wrote:

> 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. It's 
> actually quite a food fit for scene description/construction/inspection.

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. 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. The concept of an "object" which contains both data and functions 
which can operate
on the data is itself a useful and valuable, but at present, I see 
little of value in the additional
trappings of OOP. Its not O, but OP that I object to. 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.

:)

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> David H. Burns wrote:
>> (Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, I
>> think, is that
>> this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.
>>
> 
> On-topic. Your conversation is clearly about Pov-RAY, so it would
> naturally fit onto the on-topic groups better than to shit-chatting
> off-topic group :-).
> 
> -Aero
I was told I was off topic in the programming group -- or maybe it's 
just what
I say, or how I say it, not the subject that's off-topic. But my critics 
are right;
I don't know enough detail to really discuss OOP. I just voice my 
objections
which apparently aren't shared.
:)

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>> 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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Thanks. I'll look at the discussion.general group. But, I've probably 
said all that I
ought.

David

scott wrote:
>> (Laugh) I love it! What can be off-topic to off-topic?  What you mean, 
>> I think, is that
>> this topic is forbidden! Or maybe simply unwanted.
> 
> No, it really is just the wrong group here.
> 
> If you look in the pov4.discussion.general group you will see that this 
> subject has already been discussed a lot, so please read through the 
> posts there, and if you feel you still have something to add then by all 
> means start a new thread.  Nobody is going to flame you for a forbidden 
> topic, I assume that the developers want input from as many users as 
> possible when deciding what to do for POV4.
> 
>

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> IME, programs written in C are almost always unreadable. But I'm biased. ;-)

  Your problem is that you refuse to aknowledge readability even for examples
which clearly are, probably because of some principle.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> IME, programs written in C are almost always unreadable. But I'm biased. ;-)
> 
>   Your problem is that you refuse to aknowledge readability even for examples
> which clearly are, probably because of some principle.

Oh, I have a far bigger "problem" than that: C is the number one 
language requested in job adverts. :-(

Post a reply to this message

> Oh, I have a far bigger "problem" than that: C is the number one language 
> requested in job adverts. :-(

So anyone interested in programming jobs might think it's a good idea to at 
least learn the basics...

BTW, at University there were *very* few people who failed to write C++ 
programs by the end of the course (and this was an Engineering course don't 
forget).  I really find it impossible to believe that you couldn't learn the 
basics of C++ from a book or decent web tutorial.

Post a reply to this message

>> Oh, I have a far bigger "problem" than that: C is the number one 
>> language requested in job adverts. :-(
> 
> So anyone interested in programming jobs might think it's a good idea to 
> at least learn the basics...
> 
> BTW, at University there were *very* few people who failed to write C++ 
> programs by the end of the course (and this was an Engineering course 
> don't forget).  I really find it impossible to believe that you couldn't 
> learn the basics of C++ from a book or decent web tutorial.

And when I was at college, we actually did a semester of C. I submitted 
a C program, which did actually do what it was intended to do. It took 
me an awefully long time to get it to work though. I was constantly 
tripped over by various things. You know, the usual:

- printf() exists.

- I keep having to look up the syntax for defining new data structures.

- C doesn't seem to distinguish between Booleans, integers, pointers and 
arrays.

- The whole issue of pointer syntax is just confusing.

- Splitting a program into more than one source file opens up a whole 
new world of pain. (Especially if you don't have the benefit of automake.)

I guess the basic problem is C's insistence on allowing you to do 
absolutely anything, no matter how stupid, and providing no help 
whatsoever in finding your mistakes. Couple that with a cryptic syntax 
where it's worryingly easy to say something completely different from 
what you actually meant and it's not the easiest of languages to use.

Fortunately, for my assignment, I merely had to write a program to "do 
graphics". (That was more or less the assignment brief. Do something 
that has graphics in it. Open-ended, much?) Fortunately, this doesn't 
involve very much sophisticated programming, just lots of algebra. I can 
just about handle that.

Still, writing code in C is the easy part. Unfortunately, as soon as you 
try to read somebody else's, you quickly realise that regular C 
programmers think it's A-OK to do random crazy stuff like using 
assignments as expressions or writing while-statements where the 
conditional test does all the work and the loop body is empty. (My 
particular favourit is performing pointer dereference, assignment, and 
incriment in a single statement... Probably very efficient at the 
machine level, but utterly opaque to read.)

As for C++... well that might be a little easier. Although the tutorial 
I was following explains things in a rather random-seeming order. (You'd 
think knowing how to write a class would be a higher priority than 
understanding const references, but hey...) It still has the basic 
problem of being a language that makes no attempt to stop you doing dumb 
things, and overly opaque syntax.

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