Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented
There is a kind of mania for object-oriented programming at the moment, but some of the smartest programmers I know are some of the least excited about it.My own feeling is that object-oriented programming is a useful technique in some cases, but it isn't something that has to pervade every program you write. To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. (See Greenspun's Tenth Rule.) Object-oriented programming is popular in big companies, because it suits the way they write software. At big companies, software tends to be written by large (and frequently changing) teams of mediocre programmers.
- ▪There is a kind of mania for object-oriented programming at the moment, but some of the smartest programmers I know are some of the least excited about it.My own feeling is that object-oriented programming is a useful technique in some case
- ▪To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. (See Greenspun's Tenth Rule.) Object-oriented programming is popular in big companies, because it suits the way they write software.
- ▪At big companies, software tends to be written by large (and frequently changing) teams of mediocre programmers.
Paul Graham — Essays files mainly under blogs. We currently carry 219 of its stories.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
There is a kind of mania for object-oriented programming at the moment, but some of the smartest programmers I know are some of the least excited about it.My own feeling is that object-oriented programming is a useful technique in some cases, but it isn't something that has to pervade every program you write. You should be able to define new types, but you shouldn't have to express every program as the definition of new types.I think there are five reasons people like object-oriented programming, and three and a half of them are bad: Object-oriented programming is exciting if you have a statically-typed language without lexical closures or macros. To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Paul Graham — Essays.