An evangelist's handbook? (Was: Re: Making a better textbook)

[sismex01 at hebmex.com]

> From: benalan at cs.bu.edu [mailto:benalan at cs.bu.edu]
> ...
> In my experience, the "encapsulation" problem is a significant hurdle.
> And it seems to me that folks who came to object-oriented programming
> from procedural programming seem to have a harder time overcoming the
> hurdle than those who have known only object-oriented programming.
> Strange.

But very true; I was proficient in Pascal and C by the time
I started using any OO language (C++ was my first, then Java,
then [urgh] Perl, and finally, Python).  While learning C++,
the toughest problem was changing my "world-view" of simply-
structured programming, into an effective "OO-world-view",
where objects interact among themselves without much
"procedural glue".

> 
> So, let's help folks get over this problem. If we could come up with
> some sound bites to offer potential converts, I think it would be of
> good use. 
>

"Give your data personality"
"Allow your information to think for itself"
"Let your data do the walking" (changed from the yellow pages bite)

> Alex was extrememly helpful in this regard, offering up
> tomes of information, as I recall. I will try to dig them out, if I
> have them, but I think we all would much rather hear it from the
> source (hint, hint). I have heard Guido say one of the reasons for
> default public access is that it was easier to implement. I think this
> argument is valid (probably more so than its simplicity might suggest)
> to a language designer, but it is not necessarily valid to a language
> adopter.

Maybe from a language design viewpoint it was easier to implemnt,
but also from a phylosophical and from a software-design viewpoint,
it's much saner than the "you and you, but not all yous" implementation
of Java and C++, and others.

> 
> Any other thoughts? For that matter, we could tackle any other issues
> (e.g., typing) that decision-makers might have problems with. I am
> soliciting evangelists, here, not debaters! There are enough of those
> threads....
>

:-)

-gustavo