Zaemis

If you were to create a new programming language, and you wanted to support object oriented programming with it, what would it look like? An object is a set of instance data and various functions that work with it. In Java, they're specified by first grouping the variables and functions together in a class, and then creating an instance from the class definition. In JavaScript, functions are dynamically attached to the instance data (or it's prototype). This is an intentional over-simplification but does highlight the fact that different programming languages approach working with objects differently. I've been thinking about objects and working with structured code in relation to Kiwi and it depresses me how much the object oriented school of thought that started with C++ and came to fruition in Java has influenced our industry. Of course there are the so-called five concepts of object oriented design , which says a design that meets the following criteria is considere...

To chefs and epicureans, spaghetti is a good thing-- it's inexpensive, easy to make, and very versatile. But spaghetti isn't so appetizing to a programmer. The phrase "spaghetti code" is an all-too-common pejorative we programmers use to describe horrible code, whether it's difficult to understand, poorly organized, or just plain long-winded. And there-in lays the problem. What really constitutes spaghetti code is subjective; I've yet to hear a concrete definition or standard metric that measures it. I've seen PHP code that amounts to nothing more than a giant switch construct... a hundred lines here to handle this condition over here, another hundred or so lines in the branch for that condition over there, maybe a dozen conditions... you get the idea. But such code isn't necessarily spaghetti. What's wrong with it is not that it's unreadable, I would argue, but rather there is a lack of encapsulation. There's a greater chance of inadver...