On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Richard O'Keefe
On 21/05/2012, at 5:33 AM, Andreas Pauley wrote:
With this in mind I've created a programming exercise where I imagine an OO programmer would use an object hierarchy with subtype polymorphism as part of the solution.
Being unfamiliar with git, I've submitted an AWK answer by e-mail.
I have committed the awk version for those interested to see: https://github.com/apauley/HollingBerries/tree/master/awk/RichardOKeefe
I've used quite a few OO languages. I like to think that I *am* an OO programmer. But this exercise struck me from the beginning as something where classes would add nothing but bulk. As a fan of Smalltalk, I have to say that the Smalltalk version confirmed this for me; a Smalltalk solution for this exercise could be a lot smaller than that one if it _didn't_ introduce new classes.
Maybe this is an example of where we as an industry has been somewhat brainwashed. For many programmers it is difficult to envision coding pretty much anything without classes. Do you know of an exercise where classes would add value? Something fairly small, roughly similar in size to this exercise. -- http://pauley.org.za/ http://twitter.com/apauley