Thread: C vrs OOP

Originally Posted by simpleid

OOP isn't any different in concept based on your exposure to languages

He didn't say it was 'different in concept,' he just said it's something nice if all you've had before is something like C or pascal.

Originally Posted by matsp

And of course other languages aren't? There is only one thing the processor(s) can execute: Machine code. Anything else has to be translated first. Whether you translate it DIRECTLY from assembler, macro assembler, C, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, ADA or whatever is irrelevant - they are all "computer languages" - just more or less directly translated from what the programmer wrote to machine-code (and not ALWAYS obviously so, compilers sometimes produce not-so-obvious code).

Programming language means features. Assembly doesn't have features - it does exactly what you tell it to do and nothing more nor less. You write one instruction - it is one machine code instruction after linking. Assembly is a human-readable form of machine code with no modifications (only storing used registers on the stack). It changes with the processors, it can't be developed as a language. Macros and other "features" sometimes used in Assembly code are totally assembler-specific stuff, not part of assembly.

Assembly can't be compared as a language. It is not portable because it is basically machine code, which is different for most devices.

Originally Posted by Rashakil Fol

Object oriented programming (don't know why people here are capitalizing it the way the Bible capitalizes The Lord) is wonderful if all you've been exposed to beforehand is C or Pascal.

It's the same thing what we've done in C, just looks a little different.

Originally Posted by brewbuck

Can BOTH be viewed as "object oriented." C++ just uses a different syntax which makes it more apparent that the object is the important concept. C focuses on the function, not the object.

What you think is important IS important. People rely too much on the syntax.

Originally Posted by Mario. F

It's not C over C++ now. I think it's OOP over non-OOP... but then and again I may be wrong. Maxorator entertains me so much I forget to listen.

You got that right.

I never wanted to say anything is better. My point is that OOP is not The God, it's just a form of syntax. If you like the syntax, go ahead, use it. But worshipping it is just silly. It is just another form of syntax like any other. The only thing that really matters is the programmer (of course I like to remind once in a while that performance of the program is important too), other things affect very slightly. Code is not better or worse depending on the language's syntax. Programmer is not better or worse depending on the syntax of the language (s)he uses mostly.

Have fun.

I just noticed that the concept of OOP is frequently considered too important. It isn't. Programmers are important. The syntax doesn't really matter.

OOP is not a syntax. It's a programming paradigm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-...ed_programming and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm)

As a concept it is responsible for major changes in the industry and one of the key players of most of what you use today as far as software is concerned. The problem with OOP is that those you criticize are those who tend to bring religion into these things.

The fact is that OOP doesn't need champions of the cause. It speaks for itself when used on those situations where it makes sense to use and it has nothing to say to its detractors either, because it doesn't pretend to be the solution to Life the Universe and Everything.

lol, rely on syntax, that would be every programming language in existence... even assembly. technically, in the most fundamental meaning of the term, even machine language probably could be said to have syntax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax

we do rely on syntax, but saying we rely too much on the syntax is like saying, "you worry too much about grammar."
yea well you sort of have to in -any- context to communicate anything in understandable terms.

OOP has many advantages over Procedural Programming.

Some keys to OOP programming design:

1) Encapsulation. (Private members)
2) Inheritance. (Derived classes)
3) Polymorphism. (Virtual functions)

These 3 things allow programmers to write code that is easier to understand and maintain and also modify by adding new features on top of what already exists.

Procedural programming has gone by the wayside these days, because it has been shown to lead to hard to understand, unmaintainable, and unmodifiable code.

That's what they tell me, anyways.

Specifically, C++ has a lot of great features such as the powerful STL and templates, while still allowing low level things like pointers and other things from C.

Personally, I think C++ is the best OOP language because of these reasons. I did some Java, but I didn't care for the increased class overhead and the lack of pointers (I am too used to straight C/C++). The problem with Java is you HAVE to make a class for EVERYTHING. Annoying, IMO. OTOH, Java has a GREAT built-in GUI (swing/awt) and toolkits for just about anything you'd ever want to do.

For testing algorithms and data structures, I like straight C w/o the class overhead. It's gonna be fast, simple, and reliable, w/o dealing with OOP syntax problems that will occur. Then, once my base code is tested, I can easily move that code directly into a class framework with some accessor functions and I gain the advantages of an OOP designed program.

I disagree, but only with the last point. There is no need to write a C compiler in assembly for every architecture. Once you have a C compiler written in C for an architecture A and it runs there, you can write a code generator for another architecture B, still in C, and run it on architecture A to compile the compiler and code generator so that they run on architecture B. Voila, you have just used a cross-compiler to bootstrap the B architecture, without a bit of assembly.