Re:The Myth of the Employee Class
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure what point you're making. An Employee class might be "sufficient" for some apps, but that doesn't make it correct. It breaks quite easily, as described by the poster at the top of this thread.
We typically model Person and Company as subclasses of BusinessEntity. You seem to think this is a "big tree", but it's actually quite small.
Contact is a role of the BusinessEntity class, not a class itself. If you model it like this you have HAS-A Contact, not IS-A Contact. As you state, this more flexible. But you're helping my side of the argument here, not challenging it.
OO does not require deep class hierarchies (a la Java or.NET). It handles graphs and sets just fine. Can you post an example of something in this areana that it doesn't do well?
-- Brian
Re:The Myth of the Employee Class
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 1
I assume you're joking? People don't turn into dogs.
MFC may have some issues, but it was (and still is) enormously succesful. Java and.NET are both similar to MFC in that they also have single-rooted class hierarchies. So MFC is hardly a good anti-pattern.
I don't want to get the book. I want the book review to back up its claims.
You're right that theory and practice are not always in perfect agreement. The problem here is that people don't understand the theory, and hence are unable to apply it. So then they blame the theory for being inadequate.
OO may suffer from poor public relations, but that doesn't mean it's broken.
Exactly. Tom is an instance of the Person class. Tom plays the role of Employee in his relationship with the XYZ Co.
You're right that people get misled by the "is a" in "Tom is a manager". English is ambiguous, but UML is not.
Don't know why you say that you need ER concepts to model this, though.
-- Brian
The Myth of the Employee Class
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 1
You have to destroy objects to change their state, for example when an employee changes to a manager, etc.
What a perfect setup, thank you. I couldn't have asked for a better example of poor OO design.
The correct way to model this is to realize that there is no such class as Employee or Manager. The correct class is Person. Employee is the role that a Person plays in a relationship with the Company class. You don't need to destroy the Person instance when someone gets promoted.
This shows that the true problem is not with OO, but with poorly applied OO concepts. As with any tool, it is possible to use OO incorrectly.
Bill's analogy sucks, but your defense of the (supposed) hoards of farmers/programmers isn't any better.
First of all, I'd bet most of the people who write open/free software are professional developers, in which case you (and Bill) really can't call them amateurs. They do it on the side for fun, but they're still professionals.
Why is this? Because there aren't many people who are talented enough to be professional programmers but aren't. The pay is simply too good. Why break your back farming if you can program for a living and make twice as much money?
It's hard to tell what point you are trying to make, but you seem to be saying that I can't sell my copy of Steven King's book to someone else. If that's what you're trying to say, you're wrong. People do it every day. Have you never heard of a used book store?
It's true that SOAP-over-HTTP is intended to pass through most current corporate firewall configurations. However, the creators of SOAP deliberately included a SOAPAction header so that firewall admins will still be able to filter out undesirable SOAP requests.
Oh please. Nice work there demolishing that straw man. I especially liked the part where I'm a Freedom Fighter. Do I also get all the good looking chicks?
For the record, I agree with you -- it is not evil to just ignore the ads. Truth be told, when I watch live TV, I enjoy the commercials as much as the next guy. (Sadly, they're usually better than whatever show I'm watching.)
Now it's your turn to admit that there's also nothing evil (or hypocritical) about blocking ads.
Or maybe you'd prefer another ad hominem go at me?
> But if your going to then turn around and junkbuster the ads, and still actively view > and participate in discussions, I find that very hypocritical.
So... what is the weather like on your planet?
No one is obligated to view advertisements. Have you been so brainwashed by corporate culture that you've lost all perspective?
Let's consider the implications of your claim that it is hypocritical to block ads. Do you also feel obligated to read each ad? Ignoring an ad could be considered hypocritical, you know. Do you feel obligated to click through? Someone might find you hypocritical otherwise. When you tape something on TV, do you carefully watch the ads during playback? To do other wise would be "very hypocritical", don't you think?
Your numbers may be off (as you suggested yourself), but I don't see anything wrong in principle with doing math using this "quantitative" scale. That is, after all, what quantities are for.
In any case, the point remains that your focus on the individual alone nearly guarantees that the tragedy of the commons will occur.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
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I'm not sure what point you're making. An Employee class might be "sufficient" for some apps, but that doesn't make it correct. It breaks quite easily, as described by the poster at the top of this thread.
.NET). It handles graphs and sets just fine. Can you post an example of something in this areana that it doesn't do well?
We typically model Person and Company as subclasses of BusinessEntity. You seem to think this is a "big tree", but it's actually quite small.
Contact is a role of the BusinessEntity class, not a class itself. If you model it like this you have HAS-A Contact, not IS-A Contact. As you state, this more flexible. But you're helping my side of the argument here, not challenging it.
OO does not require deep class hierarchies (a la Java or
-- Brian
I assume you're joking? People don't turn into dogs.
-- Brian
MFC may have some issues, but it was (and still is) enormously succesful. Java and .NET are both similar to MFC in that they also have single-rooted class hierarchies. So MFC is hardly a good anti-pattern.
You want to get more specific?
-- Brian
I don't want to get the book. I want the book review to back up its claims.
You're right that theory and practice are not always in perfect agreement. The problem here is that people don't understand the theory, and hence are unable to apply it. So then they blame the theory for being inadequate.
OO may suffer from poor public relations, but that doesn't mean it's broken.
-- Brian
Exactly. Tom is an instance of the Person class. Tom plays the role of Employee in his relationship with the XYZ Co.
You're right that people get misled by the "is a" in "Tom is a manager". English is ambiguous, but UML is not.
Don't know why you say that you need ER concepts to model this, though.
-- Brian
You have to destroy objects to change their state, for example when an employee changes to a manager, etc.
What a perfect setup, thank you. I couldn't have asked for a better example of poor OO design.
The correct way to model this is to realize that there is no such class as Employee or Manager. The correct class is Person. Employee is the role that a Person plays in a relationship with the Company class. You don't need to destroy the Person instance when someone gets promoted.
This shows that the true problem is not with OO, but with poorly applied OO concepts. As with any tool, it is possible to use OO incorrectly.
It happens that I've written an entire article on this topic here: The Myth of the Employee Class.
-- Brian
Before we get out the brickbats, can someone please post an example of the horrors of OO technique that are referred to here.
As someone who has used OO successfully for 10+ years, I'll have a hard time accepting these OO "antipatterns" without concrete examples.
-- Brian
Bill's analogy sucks, but your defense of the (supposed) hoards of farmers/programmers isn't any better.
First of all, I'd bet most of the people who write open/free software are professional developers, in which case you (and Bill) really can't call them amateurs. They do it on the side for fun, but they're still professionals.
Why is this? Because there aren't many people who are talented enough to be professional programmers but aren't. The pay is simply too good. Why break your back farming if you can program for a living and make twice as much money?
-- Brian
Here
Haven't tried it yet, so I can't say if it works.
-- Brian
Yes! This happened to me. Couldn't understand how/why this thing installed itself.
Sorry, but it's owned by CNet: com.com whois
Yes, exactly. Thanks.
-- Brian
It's hard to tell what point you are trying to make, but you seem to be saying that I can't sell my copy of Steven King's book to someone else. If that's what you're trying to say, you're wrong. People do it every day. Have you never heard of a used book store?
-- Brian
Now that is impressive.
-- Brian
Except that SOAPAction hasn't actually been deprecated. At least according to the spec. Which I'm sure you read from start to finish.
-- Brian
It's true that SOAP-over-HTTP is intended to pass through most current corporate firewall configurations. However, the creators of SOAP deliberately included a SOAPAction header so that firewall admins will still be able to filter out undesirable SOAP requests.
See http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part2/#soapaction
-- Brian
In other words, if the music industry disappeared, recorded music would go with it.
You make this sound like a good thing.
-- Brian
Excellent work. Thanks.
-- Brian
There must be a way to get it that doesn't require QT Pro. It will still play on the free QT player, won't it?
Argh.
-- Brian
I agree. Rational's software is mostly crap. That's why I do my UML modeling in Visio. Not that Visio is a dream, but it's certainly better than Rose.
-- Brian
There are plenty of viruses that require positive action by the victim. For example, you might take a look at the Melissa virus.
-- Brian
Oh please. Nice work there demolishing that straw man. I especially liked the part where I'm a Freedom Fighter. Do I also get all the good looking chicks?
For the record, I agree with you -- it is not evil to just ignore the ads. Truth be told, when I watch live TV, I enjoy the commercials as much as the next guy. (Sadly, they're usually better than whatever show I'm watching.)
Now it's your turn to admit that there's also nothing evil (or hypocritical) about blocking ads.
Or maybe you'd prefer another ad hominem go at me?
-- Brian
> But if your going to then turn around and junkbuster the ads, and still actively view
> and participate in discussions, I find that very hypocritical.
So... what is the weather like on your planet?
No one is obligated to view advertisements. Have you been so brainwashed by corporate culture that you've lost all perspective?
Let's consider the implications of your claim that it is hypocritical to block ads. Do you also feel obligated to read each ad? Ignoring an ad could be considered hypocritical, you know. Do you feel obligated to click through? Someone might find you hypocritical otherwise. When you tape something on TV, do you carefully watch the ads during playback? To do other wise would be "very hypocritical", don't you think?
-- Brian
Your numbers may be off (as you suggested yourself), but I don't see anything wrong in principle with doing math using this "quantitative" scale. That is, after all, what quantities are for.
In any case, the point remains that your focus on the individual alone nearly guarantees that the tragedy of the commons will occur.
-- Brian
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
-- Brian