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May 10, 2005
Contrarian Advice on Object-Oriented Design
I don't agree, but it is always growing to read someone smart who disagrees with you. Such is Alan Holumb on OOP/D.
The key point in my reading is that good design makes the object do the work, not get data out of the object and do the work yourself. Seems reasonable in cases where you know exactly what work the object will be doing. But designing forward, it is good to have the data available, though there is some argument about whether that data is a property purely internal.
I would like to hear his definition of an object, since my oo education taught me that an object is a collection of data and actions upon that data. Seems pretty fundamental ontologically. Of course, when I am designing, I use a different heuristic often. An object is a thing that represents a physical or logical or virtual entity. What you expect that thing to know, the object should know, and what you expect that thing to do, the object should do. I often ask, "What do I need to get from this object to do what I want?"
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Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM
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