[Tutor] Time to Use a Global Variable?

[Alan Gauld]

>   As my software engineering colleague so tactfully and sensitively put 
> it,
> it's very difficult for someone who's spent decades writing procedural 
> code
> as a non-professional to stop thinking procedurally when working with an
> object-oriented language.

Actually its just as hard for professional software engineers.
There were some studies done when OO started to become really popular
in the early 90's.  They reckoned you could teach OOP to a new programmer
in 3-6 months but for a long term procedural programmer they would learn
the syntax in a week but it would take 6 months to 2 years to learn to 
really
think in OO terms.

> wrote, there's as much to unlearn as there is to learn to make the
> transition.

Absolutely. It is a new way of approaching problems. Its very hard to
change your whole approach to problem analysis - especially if you have
a strong math background because math fits the procedural/functional
style much better than it does OO. Those who come from a life sciences
background or a traditional engineering background can usually transition
much more easily because they are used to thinking in terms of systems of
linked objects and their interactions.

Alan G.