Re: WHERE ARE ALL THE OT EXPERTS???

[tangent@cyberport.com (Warren Young)]

crocker@tamarin.cig.mot.com (Ron Crocker) wrote:

>>trivial as to be completely useless, and (2) it's *worse* than useless 
>>because it's a completely action-centered approach.  Urgh.
>
>2) Define "action-centered" in this context. I don't understand what
>   you're trying to tell me. What is the alternative ("passive-centered" :-)?

Action-centered design is usually associated with procedural
programming, because it encourages this approach.  Basically, it
centers on the actions of the user, with each of the user's paths
modeled in the software.  Object-oriented programming can capture this
sort of model, too, but doing so doesn't take advantage of the
paradigm.  For one thing, it tends to destroy reusability, because it
ties the design to one specific domain.  So, action-oriented design is
to OOP what unstructured design was to procedural programming.

A book I recently read points out that most people who use
action-oriented design when using an O-O language tend to have roots
in procedural programming.  I don't know anything about CRC cards, but
if it is action-oriented, it wouldn't surprise me that managers tend
to like them.  Most of these managers were probably promoted out of
the programming ranks while they were still using a procedural
language.  Unfortunately, the different duties of a manager tend to
separate them from the current technical happenings, so they're not as
up-to-date as when they were programming.

= Warren -- http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent