Re: What is wrong with OO ?

[edward@magicmouse.com (Edward de Jong)]

There is nothing comical at all in the comparison between WordStar and
Microsoft Word.  WordStar was the creation of one genius, Rob Barnaby,
whom I met when Micropro bought my clone of WordStar, written in C, which
became WordStar 2000.  It took 12 programmers, myself included, one entire
year, and about 100,000 lines of code to surpass the work of just one man,
working in macro assembler.  But let me tell you, macro assemblers are
very clever tools; they can do amazing things; you can have multiple
levels of macros, which are effectively miniature compilers, which output
executable code, with the lowest possible overhead.  

In the hands of a genius, assembler can do amazing things in tiny spaces;
that is why Barnaby could do so much in so little room.  To implement a
word processor that could run (with overlays), in a total space of 64kb,
that had mail merge, all the printer drivers embedded in it, as well as
controlling the screen in an optimal way, should be acknowledged for the
amazing feat that it was.

The reason macro assembler can be MORE POWERFUL than so-called higher
level languages is that by using multiple levels of macros, you are
creating a multi-level programming language, while most high level
languages actually operate on a single or double level of abstraction.

The real practical reasons for not using assembler are:
   1) geniuses are rather rare
   2) the resulting product has a lot of lines of code (4 to 10 times more
than high level languges), which makes it harder to understand
   3) the resulting product is almost impossible for another person to
understand, because of the multi-level programming involved.

-- 
edward@magicmouse.com
author of Flying Colors for Macintosh, Pippin, and Windows platforms