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RE: Is OO a deliberate fraud?
I couldn't agree more. And it is horrifying to know that this is the stuff
they teach at Computer Science all to often.
I prefer the term "Process Oriented" Programming vs. Object Oriented
Programming or more generally (as it applies to Systems Engineering in
general) "Entities and Interactions". Both have formalisms (CSP and
Comm-Unity) to back them up. OO's most advanced state of the practice is
UML, a monster of a graphical notation (but they call it a language).
Who remembers the demo floppy (1.44 Mbytes for the young amongst the
readers) of QNX ? It was self-booting, message passing based and then showed
a GUI browser and you could actually connect to the net and browse. I am
proud to say that our latest OpenComRTOS provides a minimal preemptive RTOS
(with send and receive services) in just 850 bytes, even when written in C.
The distributed version is less than 2KBytes.
I recently tested an Open Source tool written in OO Java. Besides that it
was very slow, it complained very rapidly about a lack of memory while I had
1 Gbyte of RAM.
OO is the hidden Wintel conspiracy. It justfies why we need 3 GHz
Pentium-XX, more memory and more diskspace to keep the industry going. Did
you know that Intel primarily invests in start-ups that develop resource
hungry software?
How to create a sulf-sustaining economy is not for those who look for the
working solutions. I don't know if this is the ultimate satisfaction (as it
has some drawbacks) but I currently work for target CPUs with 2K of RAM and
32 KB of flash. These things often go in safety critical automotive
applications. Forget about OO in this world. We try formal modeling whenever
we can.
Cheers,
Eric
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Eric.Verhulst@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Skype me at: ericverhulstskype
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Systematic Systems Development Methodologies
Trustworthy Embedded Components
http://www.OpenLicenseSociety.org
-----------------------------------------------------------
" "Concept" is a vague concept", L. Wittgenstein
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-occam-com@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-occam-com@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of tjoccam@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 8:10 PM
To: Ruth Ivimey-Cook; Jim Sack
Cc: 'P.H.Welch'; java-threads@xxxxxxxxxx; occam-com@xxxxxxxxxx;
j.kerridge@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Is OO a deliberate fraud?
Ruth, Jim, and all,
This is in indirect response to Ruth Ivimey-Cook "Re: CPA 2006 - Call for
Papers", in which she laments a dismal lack of response. I think it's the
death throes of science being choked out by fake science, and I think I've
identified the culprit.
I'm posting this to both occam and OO-based supporters, to be fair, and
allow serious answers to my points. Merrill R. Chapman in his tech history
("In Search of Stupidity", Apress / Springer-Verlag, New York, 2003) quotes,
as 1992-1993 era OO definition at Borland, the following excerpt from "What
is Object-Oriented Software" by Terry Montlick (www.softwaredesign.com),
given here in full:
> An object is a 'black box' which receives and sends messages.
> A black box actually contains code (sequences of computer
> instructions) and data (information which the inctruction operates
> on). Traditionally, code and data have been kept apart. For example,
> in the C language, units of code are called functions, while units of
> data are called structures.
> Functions and structures are not formally connected in C.
> A C function can operate on more than one type of structure and more
> than one function can operate on the same structure.
>
> Not so for object-oriented software! In o-o (object-oriented)
> programming, code and data are merged into a single indivisible
> thing---an object. This has some big advantages, as you'll see in a
> moment. But first, here is why SDC developed the 'black box' metaphor
> for an object. A primary rule of object-oriented programming is that
> as the user of an object, you should never need to peek inside the
> box!
ALL YOU OCCAM AND CSP FOLKS... DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? It's stolen from
the definition of a process, and fits real OO (inheritance, polymorphism,
method calls) as well as a shoe fits an ear. Were they really saying that in
1993? Because then the whole thing was fraud from day one---describing one
thing (the right thing) while doing a completely different game with, yes,
structures (objects) and functions (methods).
Processes offer the black box of freedom from side effects, while OO offers
the black box of ignorance. Inheritance, polymorphism, and especially
encapsulation say that you are supposed to treat the pushbutton for
uploading a file as the same as the pushbutton for shutting down a nuclear
reactor. Don't look inside the box; pretend they are the same.
And if two black boxes A and B both upload files, which "impenetrable"
black box contains the shared file system and network drivers that they
CALL? This is the emperor's new clothes!
Example: I just finished examining US Patent Application 20030182503 (go to
uspto.gov > eBusiness... Patents File Search View > Search Patents and
Published Applications). It is intending to set up independent tasks, but in
[0070] it says "the group_write I/O task 352 calls (step 354) an IO task
from the disk object 225a..." That implies multiple stack nestings and
out-of-black-box side effects. That's the only example of metaphor run amok
that I can deal with this week.
This admitted metaphor (image dissimilar to reality) generates ever-huger
languages and OSs, which is proof it is bad science. The fact that it never
works without being tinkered with is further proof. OO just grabs whatever
paradigm description sounds good and applies it to itself. It's as if the
Renaissance epicycle people neutralized Kepler by saying epicycles were
ellipses. It's as fraudulent as the old practice of big companies announcing
a product to kill a smaller competitor, and then not bothering to produce.
We can't coexist with this monster; it's killing all good science. Have you
noticed life is like a Poul Anderson novel where science is dying and all
that remains is huge, slavish technology-by-rote?
We need to go back to scratch, to static non-virtual assembly language
design, and build all serious design in a higher-level language free of OO
and other infinite metaphor. Once we control the harness, they can use OO if
they want for what it is good for: manipulating graphic widgets in a GUI.
Larry Dickson