The Soap-box - Readers Respond

by Jeff Stevens

Published 1998-07-01    Printer-friendly version

The following are a few of the responses from our readers to the original "I HATE OOP" Soapbox column.

There were some specific problems in the article that I'd like to mention:

1. The Microsoft Developer Network CD-ROM is available in several levels, from a single Library CD at under $100 up through the annual Professional Subscription at around $500 to the annual Universal Subscription at over $2000.
2. You hardly need a $2000 diagramming program to do or understand OOP.
3. Memory leaks are easy to cause in any language that allows dynamic allocation, whether it supports OOP or not (it can be done in Pascal too).
4. I'm not sure what the author means by "you don't know exactly how the program will execute." Windows programming is inherently event-driven; ABC just rearranges things.
5. The article says "there are some heroes at TopSpeed working on this super-wizard technology. I can't wait to buy it." Aren't these the same people who created ABC?

The biggest problem I see is that the article should really have been entitled "I Hate ABC" because that seems to be the real issue. The problem that people seem to have with ABC is that it's a whole new "language" that people have to learn on top of Clarion. That's hard work and people don't like to do it. If ABC didn't use OOP, people would still be making the same complaints that it's too different and too hard to learn.

--Vince Kimball--

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This was a GREAT article. I agree with Bob entirely, for whatever that's worth! <G>

I chose Clarion 10 years ago because it is an 'elegant' language. It's readable, logical, efficient, etc.

If I thought it was going to become OOP oriented and lose this elegance, I would not have chosen it as my language of choice. I'm going to give serious consideration to spending the 'learning curve' on CW OOP vs. another more popular language such as VB5, Delphi, Oracle. I'm leaning toward one of these.

Debugging a CW OOP program is a sheer nightmare. Using the debugger for this is only good if you have 'Time immemorial' to complete your project, and who does? This leads to using stops, etc. Another time-consuming and painful process.

What once was a single procedure is now a multitude of procedures, in one procedure, and procedure calls 'a plenty'.

OOP may be more efficient and reduce code bloat, but as far as I'm concerned, it's virtually unnoticeable in a executing program, and difficult to modify, if you need to do anything out of the ordinary that the generic OOP stuff can't handle and you're not skilled in CW OOP.

Well that's my 2 cents.

The SOAP BOX is great and I'm happy to see Clarion Online is willing to present all points of view!

--Joe Lynch--

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Isn't it great how everyone's OOP learning curve is the same? This could be me talking last year. The only thing I knew or cared about OOP was that it spelt 'POO' backwards!

And then the man all dressed in orange comes up to you unawares in the street and slaps you round the face with a 15lb wet halibut and you suddenly understand.

"Of course" you bellow, startling everyone around you, "it's so bloody simple!"

And it is, Bob - believe me.

It took me two years of attending every course TopSpeed could put me on until the orange man arrived. And as soon as he did, I wrote my Windows 95/NT Locator class in about an hour!

Bruce Barrington calls it a 'paradigm shift' in your thinking. That's all it is. TopSpeed is NOT making a mistake by embracing OOP, its freeing us and empowering us. You try and write a Windows 95/NT locator in CW2003 (and, believe me, I've tried). Impossible. The code is scattered everywhere.

Take the accounts package I wrote in CPD. I post to the General Ledger 95 times - each one written separately. Now I do it by passing params to ONE procedure. The result of all this? NO BUGS! This one point is more important than the other benefits you get with OOP - speed improvement and size saving. You have one procedure - it works. So forget about how it works - just use it. No bugs! You then need something like it but a bit different? Derive a new 'thingy' (class) and use that. No bugs! Wonderful stuff.

You said, "ABC/OOP may be great for geniuses ... but as far as I'm concerned, for 'get it out the door' rapid business database development, it sucks!" and then you said, "And if OOP is in the background, who cares. I don't want to see it, or even know it's there." So you're coming round a bit even as you wrote the article <bg>. And that's the point. For now - forget it, just reap the benefits. Sooner or later the orange man will come and assault you too and suddenly, your programming life will take that 'paradigm shift'!

C ya!

BTW - You said at one point in the article "Who out there deletes the "Help" button the very first thing after a Wizard generates your form? Who's got time for this stuff? ". Well, Bob, come to my talk at DevCon this year. I'll show you how to get help done in a tenth of the time it takes now <rofl>!

Kindest regards

--James Fortune--

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I suggest that you get a little counter and attach it to the end of the Soap Box. Specifically, to show the number of folks that agree/disagree with the "Box" articles. Although you might not want to let out the numbers of folks, at least the percentages would be of interest. This would give the magazine a little more interaction.

I agree with the Box writer 100%! I checked with two others around here and one of the guys accused the other of ghost writing the comments. Unfortunately, any comments are taken with a smile and then ignored with an implied self- assurance that "We KNOW the correct direction for the product." I remember like comments concerning CDD 3.0/3.1.

Concerning their efforts in the corporate environment... I can't speak for the entire corporate environment, but within "our" little corporate environment, the current trends in TopSpeed software are forcing us to look in other directions. And we don't want to leave, because we've got so much existing software, gigabytes of data, training, etc. invested.

Keep up the good work on the magazine.

--Dick Hetzel--

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942