[Shootout-list] Re: OO (was Re: process creation & message passing)

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Aaron Denney wrote:
>
> (Personally, I think the most interesting bit of Simula's objects --
> reactivity -- got lost in the move to mainstream, and mainstream's
> objects are rather boring.)

>From an advocacy standpoint: I think there comes a point at which you
decide what you want to advocate, what to highlight it against, and
what's not worth bothering with because it's 'noise'.  Advocacy is
mainly about delivering a message.  I see the Shootout as a poor vehicle
for advocacy, because it contains so much gratuitous complexity.  For
any one given person's interest or problem domain, there's a whole ton
of stuff that just isn't relevant.  A lot of 'kitchen sink' feeling.

'Kitchen sink' might actually be a good thing if you don't know what the
heck you're looking for.  You'll certainly get a whole lot of axes of
exploration in front of you.  But let's say you were more interested in
specifics like "Simula niceties in modern OO languages."  How the hell
are you going to find that sort of thing in the Shootout?  You're not.
Even scratching your head for days on end about the Shootout, you're
not.

Well, unless you're a total language wonk, the sort who loves studying
any / every language out there.  The kind of person who would pore over
the Shootout for weeks and weeks and weeks, no matter how abstrusely the
information was presented.  I'm saying there's a question of audience.
Advocacy people are always considering their audience.  I'm certainly
not a language wonk.  I'm an ASM problem domain wonk.

What I'm saying is, if you guys can't agree on some basic 'big picture'
notion of what OO means, then you shouldn't have it as a testing
category.  Maybe it's a baloney testing category, or just too broad +
noisy to be of any use.

Or another alternative: forget the Shootout.  Forget its 'kitchen sink'.
Spend a long time defining what's important about OO, what all the
variables and permutations are.  Make a website just for that.  The 'OO
Comparo' website.  I mean, the subject does seem to have sufficient
depth and complexity to warrant its own website.

What's important to you?  Breadth of coverage, in a format that most
people can digest?  Or extreme picky depth of coverage, suitable for OO
wonks?


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.