Re: Programming it's a play

[Nicolas Roard]

On 2003-09-20 15:44:49 +0000 Dennis Leeuw <dleeuw@made-it.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I picked up working at the Objective-C programming guide. The last couple of 
> weeks I have been working on the Guide and have been reading a lot of 
> documentation. The more I read the less happy I was with the Wheel example 
> off the current Guide for Classes and Objects.
>
> So I need an new idea. The following is what I came up with to explain the OO 
> programing terms. I would like people to review the following text to see if 
> that can be used as an explanation of Objective-C programming.

Well, the actor metaphor is a good one, mainly to explain polymorphism.
But I'm not very fond of of the metaphor a Class == an Actor, and
an Object == an Actor's performance ...
Because generally, objects (classes instances) are considered as living 
entities,
acting on their own -- it doesn't fit well with a performance of the same actor 
somewhat,
as they generally don't happen at the same time and don't cooperate :-)
I would prefers the metaphor a Class == an actor school, an Object == an actor.
Each objects are separate entities (actors) and could communicate between them
and act togethers to play (ie, they runs the program)
Thus, the "learning lessons" part would be the object's creation (class 
instanciation).

Calling a method is effectively sending a message to an actor. What's good imho
is to stress the fact of considering objects as separate entities, acting 
togethers,
where you could send the same message to all of them and they will act 
differently.

I'm not sure the actor metaphor is a good one to explain inheritance -- perhaps
another metaphor would be more suited to expain that part of OOP.

--
Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com>
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