[PD] "object" or "class" in pdpedia

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Thu Sep 13 20:06:50 CEST 2007


On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, Steffen wrote:
> On 13/09/2007, at 5.11, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> The term "class" has not really been used in Pd land much at all.
>> The term "object" has been used for both classes and instances
> Just to clarify. Abstractions are classes too? Such that an instance
> of an abstraction is called an object?

Yes. An abstraction file is a class; a loaded abstraction is an object.

> (I never really got tired of functional programming, so pardon my 
> ignorance.)

Most likely you mean procedural programming, but it doesn't help that 
several of the most common language of that kind (C/C++/etc) calls its 
procedures "functions".

Many people still call that "structured programming" instead but i believe 
that this way of calling it is historical and buzzword-driven. I think of 
"structured programming" as something that encompasses almost all of 
programming nowadays including object-oriented programming. In that sense, 
object-oriented programming is an extension of procedural programming. 
Some languages (C++) make that extension optional while some others 
express everything in terms of that extension.

Some call object-oriented programming "a radical paradigm shift"... it may 
be for someone who has a narrow view of programming, but when the paradigm 
is like "solve your problem using anything that the language offers, 
whichever way that is most direct", then those new (40 year old) tools 
called "objects" "methods" "classes" will look more approachable than if 
you rely on a methodology that always supposes that procedures are the 
best tool for anything.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada


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