rottc0dd

I am not sure of historical significance of what OOP is, but even Alan Kay seem to agree that modern definition of OOP is not what he intended[1]. But, for better or worse we are stuck with the principles.

We even have design patterns like Command, to workaround first class functions in "pure" OOPy way.

And for enterprise software development, I like it that way. It can make up a definition it wants and stick to it. I think it is better for a language's ecosystem and culture to have one dominant paradigm than becoming kitchen sink of programming languages.

Edit: added a link

[1] softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/264697/alan-kay-the-big-idea-is-messaging

From my previous comment in hn:

As a java guy and think python is weird, I don't think this sucks.

But, I also agree that can serve as terrible intro to programming if you start programming right away without understanding the basics of abstractions. But, often when we have tools either designed for a purpose in mind or a dominant paridigm or reaction to existing set of tooling, this can result in understandable yet extreme abstractions.

Java is designed with OOP in mind and it kind of makes sense to have the user to think in terms of lego blocks of interfaces. Every method or class needs to have clear understanding of its users.

public - software handle is for all users

protected - software handle for current and extending classes

default - software is exposed to current package

private - software is restricted to be used in current class alone and nowhere else

So, the beginning of java programming starts with interface exposed to the user or other programmers. Is it weird and extreme. Yes. At least, it is consistent.

Another thing that impedes us sunken cost fallacy. Classic "Simple vs easy" change. Even if a design is comparatively simpler, it is harder to make such change for small feature.

We had a project which is supposed to convert live objects back into code with autogenerated methods. The initial design was using a single pass over the object graph and creating abstractions of HDL and combining method blocks in the same pass.

That is a big hairy code with lot of issues. Simpler would be to handle one problem at a time - method generation in one pass and then convert the methods to HDL. But, getting approval for a deployed app is so hard. Particularly when it is a completer rewrite.

Nice work.

Still buggy. If you increase the ball size and increase the speed, the whole thing goes black/white in 10 seconds.

Top story: Kiro: new agentic IDE

Hi,

I think I have mentioned this before in HN too. I am not from CS background and just learnt the trade as I was doing the job, I mean even the normal stuff.

We have a project that tries reify live objects into human readable form. Final representation is so complicated with lot of types and the initial representation is less complicated.

In order to make it readable, if there is any common or similar data nodes, we have to compare and try to combine them i.e. find places that can be made into methods and find the relevant arguments for all the calls (kind of).

Initial implementation did the transformation into the final form first, and then started the comparison. So, the comparison have to deal with all the different combinations of the types we have in final representation now, which made the whole thing so complex and has been maintained by generation of engineers that nobody had clear idea how it was working.

Then, I read about hashmap implementation later (yep, I am that dumb) and it was a revelation. So, we did following things:

1. We created a hash for skeleton that has to remain the same through all the set of comparisons and transformation of the "common nodes", (it can be considered as something similar to methods or arguments) and doing the comparison for nodes with matching skeletal hashes and

2. created a separate layer that does the comparison and creating common nodes on initial primitive form and then doing the transformation as the second layer (so you don't have to deal with all types in final representation) and

3. Don't type. Yes. Data is simplest abstraction and if your logic can made into data or some properties, please do yourself a favor and make them so. We found lot of places, where weird class hierarchies can be converted into data properties.

Basically, it is a dumb multi pass decompiler.

That did not just speed up the process, but resulted in much more readable and understandable abstractions and code. I do not know, if this is widely useful but it helped in one project. There is no silver bullet, but types were actual problem for us and so we solved it this way.

> I did try to ask are we not computers.

I meant to say "I did not try to ask are we not computers."

> There are some aspects that have some similarity to computation, but also many that are not.

What I have explained is the exact way a chromosome works, it's raison d'etre. I think this cannot be dismissed as some aspect of it. It is its essence.