Stacking Fault

Dan Ingalls Video on OO Programming

Some of the old-timers I know in the programming business complain about Object Orientation (OO). They say it's hard to make heads or tails of OO because terms like "Object" and "Class" are used in circular definitions. The good old-timers dive right in, get a feel for how you do things in OO languages and come out with a good understanding based on experience. The younger programmers I've met don't have the same issues; many of them used Java in their first programming courses. But a lot of them don't know the context into which OO languages were introduced and without this context, it's hard for them to understand why Smalltalk, Lisp, Ruby and Python programmers look down on Java and C#. Of course I wouldn't look down on anyone's language choice, all languages express the Tao (but do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.)

So I recently found this video at the internet archive. It's Dan Ingalls of Xerox PARC fame giving a talk about OO. It's from way back in 1989, so it's aimed at professional developers of the time. If you've been avoiding OO or you want to understand what the old timers were thinking when they created OO languages, this might be a good view.

Dan Ingalls: Object-Oriented Programming (1989)

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 7:01 AM