Re:Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
by eru on Monday September 24, 2007 @09:25AM
(#58876)
"(if you want function pointers, just use function pointers, and forget all this modern "object oriented" garbage)"
Why not use just functions as first class data?
Re:Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
by cperciva on Monday September 24, 2007 @05:07PM
(#59067)
> Why not [just use] functions as first class data?
Because they're not. When you copy an object, you don't copy all of its methods; instead, you copy all of its function pointers.
Re:Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
by eru on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:53AM
(#59352)
I mean there are languages that have functions as first class data. Not wrapped up in objects. Think Lisp, Scheme, Haskell. Even Python can do this - otherwise map and filter would hardly work.
Re:Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
by eru on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @10:29AM
(#59412)
Btw: I really meant 'just functions', nothing around them.
Re:Computer Science: Smart People Have Weird Hangups
by Goladus on Monday September 24, 2007 @10:20AM
(#58888)
There's a difference between hating OOP because you'd prefer to see all the underlying details, as with C and function pointers, and hating OOP because it's a clumsy metaphor when compared to the abstractions offered by Lisp and similar high level languages.
For the web guy, it seems clear that he's a purist and doesn't want to compromise. Sometimes I wish more people were like him.
The fact is, however, that having hangups doesn't mean that you're smarter than anyone else. Rather, it simply means that you're willing to refuse jobs which don't meet your (arbitrary) requirements. People who are smart are more able to be picky, because they have more jobs available to them; but people who are independently wealthy can turn down jobs due to personal hangups; and anyone who is employed in a field other than programming can afford to have as many programming-related hangups as they want.
If you have to support a wife and children, and programming is your only marketable talent, you're not going to have programming-related hangups for long.