Re: class usage

thank you all for your input, and thank you richard for breaking that down nice and slow for me :) uhh, that was just me trying to see how a class works, and is by no means a real program and will never be. just as i was coding my first class i confused myself thinking that i could do the same stuff without classes and such... however i need to make trivial useless scripts to learn before i come across the need to use real classes and objects to avoid ending up lost and begging the list for help. any other comments would also be appreciated... thanks again. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Lynch" <ceo@l-i-e.com> To: "benifactor" <snorris17@cox.net> Cc: "php" <php-general@lists.php.net> Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 9:07 AM Subject: Re: [PHP] class usage > On Fri, September 29, 2006 4:35 am, benifactor wrote: > > ..and this seems to work fine, i could easily add the mail function > > and insert real variables into send() but what i don't understand is i > > could also easily do this without a class... so i guess the real > > question is what are some real life examples of class usage and why is > > it used as opposed to regular non oop? thank you for any input into > > the subject that you may have. > > For something that small, using a class is ridiculous, bloated, > over-engineered pointless exercise. > > Rather than type "ridiculous, bloated, over-engineered pointless > exercise" in this email again, I'll simply dub that "Wrong Answer" and > type that a lot. > > In fact, for almost *ANY* small/simple problem OOP is the "Wrong Answer". > > OOP shines, however, in some large-scale usage: > > #1. One architect, many developers > If you have ONE project architect cleanly map out a Plan in the form > of a large class structure, with a clear and clean internal API, and a > bunch of junior programmers to fill in the details, the Architect can > use OOP with stub functions, just like you wrote above, to build the > framework, and the junior programmers can fill in all the stubs. > > #2 Real-world parallels > Sometimes when modeling real-world parallels (or even Virtual World > parallels like game prototyping, windowing systems, etc) having OOP > leads to a very natural readable maintainable code-base, as the > operations and variables and the interaction between them mirrors to a > large extent the operation and interaction between their real-world > counterparts. > > The biggest problem in OOP, in my experience, is that you have many > developers, like yourself, who begin using OOP solely because they are > told that "it's better" > > Many of these developers then go on to write *BAD* OOP code, for all > the wrong reasons, in all the wrong places, to solve trivial problems > with the "Wrong Answer". > > Many of these developers continue to use the "Wrong Answer" over and > over, and never actually utilize any of the strengths of OOP, but > instead train themselves to misapply OOP. Their code "works" it's > just oftentimes the "Wrong Answer" > > Unfortunately, learning to use OOP correctly is a long-term process, > and you have to do a bunch of trivial things with the "Wrong Answer" > just to figure out how it works -- Which means you really should re-do > them as non OOP, or be doing them solely as a means of learning and > not throwing them into Production. > > Alas, this is not how 99% of OOP code in Production ends up in > Production... All too often, it's the "Wrong Answer" that gets thrown > into Production. > > This is not meant as a "dis" of the great OOP code out there. I've > seen some very very very nice OOP systems in the past -- in Lisp, to > solve large-scale problems. > > In PHP, to spit out a web page in under 1.7 seconds, not so much. :-) > > I'm sure somebody out there has a GREAT PHP web application with a > complex backend all in OOP. So far, all I've seen is "Wrong Answer". > > YMMV > > -- > Like Music? > http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm > >