August 01, 2005

Drive-By Dining w/ Anders Hejlsberg

[UPDATE(2005-08-01 20:02:50)]

Don has taken a moment to tell the entire story behind this post... *VERY* good read !

Post Title: Is Object Oriented Programming the Problem
His final question: "So, like the title says, Is Object Oriented Programming the Problem, or am I off on some crazy tangent?"

If you have an opinion, as mentioned, he'd very much like to hear about it.

I have an opinion :D Its actually really short and it goes like this:

Computers don't have to first think about things using object "visuals" such that they can make sense from a perspective they can more easily comprehend. But instead of trying to write code in a way that is more natural to the actual computing process we instead build layer, upon layer, upon layer, etc... such that WE can visualize our programs as if they were humans, or buildings, or machines...

If looked at from an atomic heirarchy it might look like:

atom > atoms > atomic structures > elements > composites > materials > frameworks > structures > objects > (and the beat goes on, dadadumdadum) > and suddenly we find ourselves with a MAMMOTH objectified library that hogs all our resources and makes us cry and whine about how "SLOW!" our machines are...

In reality we should be making every attempt to stay as close to the atomic level as possible, using dynamic language variations in which can adapt and adjust to ANYTHING they encounter for the simple fact that at the atomic level things are still close enough to the 'metal' that there's no requirement to abstract away from each layer the information necessary to translate the next layer, and so on and so forth until we're spending all of our cycles processing stack after stack after stack just to perform a simple calculation that increases or decreases the circumference of a circle drawn on our screen (that's if we don't first overflow the stack!).

Anybody every heard of a language called Lisp?

The more things change the more they stay the same... ;) :D

[Original Post]
If I could be one person other than myself, I would want to be DonXML.

Why's that you ask? [Note: Isn't it eery how I knew what you were thinking? I know! I scare even myself sometimes... Well, not for the same reasons... but none-the-less, I scare even myself sometimes :)[1]

Anyway, to make a long story short... Apparently Anders Hejlsberg was dining alone one evening at TechEd (why that would or even could have happened I have no real understanding beyond the general idea that people tend to feel intimidated by those in whom we idol... But not DonXML... Oh no... Its seems that Don and I come from the same "why on earth fear anything but an angry woman on a mission?"[2] mold and therefore sat down and began to enjoy some light conversation with the Great One himself.

Well, it seems even the East Coast Don can let the intimidation factor slip into the equation every now and again as [I may not have got the exact who was where, when, and what was said by who, when, and where... but the general idea is here... somewhere...] it turns out that he had been chatting with Mark Fussell about his general attitude towards OOP and the fact that he (refering to Don) is in the same belief category as many of us that OOP is dead.

Dead, DEAD, DEAD!!

OOP IS DEAD I TELL YOU!!!!

[Maybe his feelings aren't quite as strong as mine ;)]

Well, given the fact that Anders has had a little somethm' somethm' to do with the development of several OO-like languages and/or language implementations Don decided to hold back his OOP is dead comments concerned Anders might feel a little differently.

Apparently, he doesn't.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like Anders Hejlsberg? Damn that man knows a thing or two about whats up! Probably a pretty good example to follow as something tells me Mr. Hejlsberg has a little more of that somethm' somethm' up his sleeve and the benefactor is going to be...

All of us :)

Hey Anders... You lead, I'll follow... Can't wait to see what you have planned next :)

Anybody want to bet its something thats just that much better than each one of his previous "efforts"[3] (which, when you start with what eventually becomes Turbo Pascal, move to Delphi, then create J++, and follow-up with C# / CLI... To top that is saying... Well, I'm still enamored by C# and the CLI and with a bit of knowledge of whats to come in COmega... Like I said, wherever he goes, I'll be right behind him :)

Cheers :)

[1] In this section I was attempting to build on "common-ground", a very important aspect in relationship building... I think... You see, whenever I am tempted to pick up a "self-help book" to actually find out if this is part of the whole "self-help process" I just as quickly put the damn thing down after I come back to my senses and realize "These phreaks are the one that need the self-help!!! Is that eye-liner or did they get that tattooed onto their eye-lids???!!! BLAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"

[2] I mean that quite literally - A side effect of the whole five sister syndrome, err, blessing, I said blessing!!! [Too late, I'm dead...]

[3] I chose to quote "efforts" as from what I have seen most if not all of what Anders has created and continues to create is not so much effort as it is a side effect of his ability to effectively merge the creative and analytical portions of his thought process in such a way as to allow each the ability to finalize their recursive iteration through each cycle without interuption, to then combine the collective output into something truly remarkable and all together outstanding.

Wow, is that all one sentence? Huh, sure is... Hey, who am I to get in the way of one of Anders Hejlsberg creative sessions by interupting the flow with a period? I was raised with better manners than that... not that they've stuck all that well (if at all) but for Anders, I'll make 'em stick. :)

[Wonder how long that'll last?]