OOP was RE: [GD-General] Compile times

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

> Learning OO design with Eiffel and Modula2 probablyhelped, too.

Definitely.  The problem is that I had learned really basic procedural C
and then immediately hopped over to C++ back when C++ was the new "it"
language.  In fact, I was at the local college bookstore before it
opened when I knew they got in their first shipment of Borland C++ 1.0,
the first C++ compiler for the PC that wasn't hideously expensive (prior
to that you had to use cfront, g++ didn't exist yet -- and if you wanted
to use cfront, you had to be on a Unix system).

So my introduction to OOP came directly from learning C++ via Stroustrup
and Lippman, and that imposed a ton of bad habits from day one.
Specifically, it imposed no habits, because of C++'s strong
philosophical belief that "there's no right way to do OOP".  So given a
syntax and some general guidelines, I marched on from there.

If I had started with something with a lot stronger philosophy about
programming, such as Objective-C, SmallTalk, Eiffel, etc. I would have
had at least some context when learning.  As it were, I just was kind of
winging it, and this was before there was a lot of documentation on
"proper" OOP. 

And, of course, the concepts of "proper OOP" have changed drastically
over the past 10 years.

Using Objective-C has greatly cleaned up a lot of my code structure, but
at the same the inability to carry over parts of Obj-C to C++ is
incredibly frustrating.  Most of it is doable in ways I don't find
appealing (interfaces-via-MI), but it's still doable.

Brian