Re: Docs, questions and stuff
Re: Docs, questions and stuff
- Subject: Re: Docs, questions and stuff
- From: Chris Gehlker <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 12:59:25 -0700
On 8/24/01 8:49 AM, "Ken Tabb" <email@hidden> wrote:
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But the original poster has learned PHP so knows the basics of Object
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Oriented-ness. I agree that, to a C++ or OO programmer wanting to learn
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Obj-C, buying a book on C++ and converting it to Obj-C would be a fast
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way of accruing a lot of algorithms, but it's still not going to teach
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them Objective-C.
Still wearing the vest of my flameproof suit. ;=)
I did suggest one good C++ book.
Here is a easy test for others:
"Reject any book with long or nested switch statements."
I did say my remarks were addressed to those who don't feel comfortable with
OOP. PHP is somewhat of an introduction to the concepts. I'm not convinced
it can make one an OO hacker if it's learned the wrong way. Only Smalltalk
can force OO concepts down your throat.
I actually liked your analogy to natural language though. Because it is
true that your can learn Italian a lot faster by learning French well and
then studying Italian vocabulary than by just learning Italian vocabulary
and still using English grammar and sentence structure. The latter may get
you communicating faster but you could end up speaking pidgin Italian for a
long time.
The actual semantics of ObjC are so simple an extension of C, the base
language of both ObjC and C++ that they aren't worth worrying about. Stone
introduced them in one paragraph in an article that aimed at C++
programmers. The article was perfectly readable.
Design patterns, on the other hand, are hard to learn and hard to unlearn if
you learn them wrong. I know because I learned OO from the bottom up, coming
from C, and it took me some time and sweat to get over it. It's really hard
to look at working code you've sweated over and say "This is crap. It's
going to be hard to extend and hard to maintain."
Since I learned to do it with my own code, I've seen lots of examples in
ObjC, C++ and Java from folks who never did learn how to do it.
--
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm
beginning to believe it. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)