Object-Oriented Programming is Bad

What people said

jmulho · 2019-12 · Strong recommendation

Looking at your top priority books I recalled a slide from one of Brian Will's videos on object oriented programming: "Object Oriented Programming is Bad" [VIDEO] . At around the 43:51 he pulls up a slide picturing several of these (and similar) books. Here is a rough quote: "I can tell you from personal experience of having read these books that you don't need to read them. They don't have answers, they aren't going to square the circle, and you are going to waste productive years of your life trying to live up to their ideals." Now that is just one rather controversial opinion, but we are talking about potentially wasting productive years of your life so I wanted to let you know that opinion is out there. That being said, it would probably be hugely beneficial to read a few of those books and then watch a few of Brian's videos (he has three or four on the topic) and sort out your own opinion. Also, Brian's other (not controversial) videos (dozens) are excellent for learning about programming. Also, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a keeper. I thought of it last night when I was checking out at a store. I stuck my debit card into the thing, entered my PIN number, then clicked the big blue button that said "Skip PIN". The woman behind the counter said "don't worry about it; everybody does that!"

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ryanmarsh · 2017-11 · Strong recommendation

Code should be written first and foremost for humans to understand, and incidentally for compilers to understand. [LINK] If we can all agree about that then we have to ask ourselves if encapsulating data and behavior at the granularity of classes makes the most sense for human comprehension. In naive OO examples (Animal -> Cat) it does. In practice however, it's debatable (at best). I highly recommend this video by Brian Will who does a much better job explaining this problem than I could. [VIDEO] Douglas Crockford also does a good job of explaining some of the trouble with classes. [LINK]

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cutler · 2024-11 · Recommendation

OOP is an industry of its own which generates a ton of incidental complexity. See "Object-Oriented Programming is Bad" by Brian Wills ( [VIDEO] ) and most of Rich Hickey's excellent videos, especially his keynote at Rails Conf 2012 where he basically told the Ruby crowd they're doing it wrong ( [LINK] ).

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