Take a look at Paul Graham’s “Why Arc Isn’t Especially Object-Oriented” for a nice refreshing take on object-oriented programming. From his list of 5 reasons why OOP is popular, here’s number 3:

“Object-oriented programming generates a lot of what looks like work. Back in the days of fanfold, there was a type of programmer who would only put five or ten lines of code on a page, preceded by twenty lines of elaborately formatted comments. Object-oriented programming is like crack for these people: it lets you incorporate all this scaffolding right into your source code.”

Arc is a LISP “dialect” being championed by Mr. Graham and Robert Morris. You can find more about is at the Arc Forum site. Personally, I have little but academic interest in Arc, but find Mr. Graham’s critique of OOP to be biting and on target. I’ve seen the behaviors he’s talking about in my own corporate world more than once.

Geek //