Re: What is wrong with OO ?

[Tansel Ersavas <tansel@rase.com>]

Matt Kennel wrote:
> 
> Tom Bushell (tbushell@fox.nstn.ns.ca) wrote:
> : On Tue, 17 Dec 1996 00:45:47 -0800, Tansel Ersavas <tansel@deep.net>
> : wrote:
> 
> : >I think, we can now show people how visual programming can really bump
> : >up their productivity. It also accelerates learning, and promotes more
> : >high level thinking. Visual programming is to textual programming what
> : >is textual programming to assembly language.
> 
> : Good analogy.
> 
> Is it really?  Can a painting communicate subtle ideas as clearly as
> literature?

A picture is worth a thousand words.

BTW I do not defend a total pictorial approach. There are certain things
I can do faster and better in text. In fact, I still don't much use the
Windows file management facilities and drop down to dos prompt
(especially while no one is around). However, When I am using the right
kind of visual tool, there are certain things that I can do which is
definitely a higher level, where I have no hope of achieving with the
same ease if I did it at the text level. For example, changing the
parent class of a class, I find it quite useful to do it at a visual
level. It is much easier to move the tip of an inheritance line from one
class to another, and having the underlying mechanism to do all
necessary checks for you, and change the class hierarchy for that class.

There are many things that we can do much more faster and at a higher
level with visuals, but most visual tools I found weren't practical, and
limiting. You should be able to switch between text view of your program
and visual view within a blink of an eye, and anything you do textually
should be reflected in the visual view, and vice versa. 

Besides, it is much more easier to teach people visually, if it is done
correctly. Once they learn it visually first, then people tend to stick
to visuals. When they grasp the concepts, they can dwelve into text if
they want to. 

Still I believe that the next generation will work predominantly with
pictures and will rarely revert to bulky chunks of text, unless it is a
meaningful whole. In one of our new projects, we are developing an
object oriented systems development tool for children to develop their
own games. This is a visual development tool, and we had great success
with children with early prototypes of it. It needs a lot of work, but
watching this experiment gave me the feeling that, the next generation
will have an entirely different understanding of computers, languages,
and programming. It is a scary feeling, but also a most enjoyable one. 

Tansel
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