Re: Re: Hacking with objects

[frankus]

It seems to me that a lot of people are versed in OO Principals and undoubtedly versed in Perl principles: "TIMTOWDI" and "can do!".

So in my mind these people should feel there is dissonance where: Perls "can do!" meets OO's "thou shalt not" or if you don't like that: OO's "I wouldn't do that if I were you". The point is Perl's OO is "as you like it" .. there are legends, that Perl-Coders whisper around the terminals at night after pizza, of hackers who can change the inheritance of objects at run-time.

Perl is laiden with features we (ab)use daily,so why are objects any different? Why, when I say Objects, do folk don their Systems Analysts hat?

--

Brother Frankus.

[MadraghRua]

Brother Frankus,
Thank you for provoking a thoughtful discussion on an interesting subject and all the other contributers to this discussion for equally interesting replies.

Concerning your question on objects being different, perhaps it is due to the way that OOP is taught. One always reads about a considerable amount of rigour in how an object should be created, public and private data, methods, encapsulation and on and on. Then you have the whole issue of creating beastiaries of objects, how they play together, etc. It starts to feel like Latin with all the rigour with which verb are tensed and objects are declined. But when spoken or composed by a fluent speaker, it can be magical.

Then you have English, a ne'er do well language consisting of parts of several languages and newly created bits when folk feel like it. Grammar is considerably looser (certainly in the Rocky Mountain regions) and you can make your point even by fracturing your sentences to near intelligability. But again, it can be very powerful when used fluently.

I have often thought the OOP is the new Latin and Perl as Modern English. I suspect the speed with which we abuse Perl as compared to objects is similar - Perl is perhaps more easily bent to a users will than the seemingly more rigourous OOP. Perl was designed to reflect natural languages, after all (unless I have misread the Camel book yet again). Rigour of form tends to make folk stick to the rules that they have spent a good deal of time learning and then (over)zealously apply them to how the language should be spoken. Perhaps this tends to stop folk from thinking as an English style hacker and more as Latin style formalist.

Just a thought.

MadraghRua
yet another biologist hacking perl....

[tilly]

Perl's motto is TIMTOWTDI. I think that most people view Perl's OO support as providing some of the more organized and methodical WTDI. That said, it is possible to express yourself very loosely and fluently using OO techniques. Structure and flexibility can go together...