At 19:45 -0300 02/13/2002, Agust�n Mar�a Rodr�guez wrote:
>>>>I'd avoid any books by Kerry Thompson, though.
>>> You wrote some books?
>> Methinks he was kidding, actually. ;)
> Well, that could have been true! I don�t know Kerry
>personally. Maybe he is a bold old man with white beard who that
>started with Director 3 and wrote a Lingo book for his grandchildren!
No, that's James Newton you're thinking of. Kerry was the technical
editor on my tome, and as it happens he (aha! a gender clue! ;)
worked on James's book as well.
>Yeah.. that�s me. Barry remembered me the other day that I don�t
>really use OOP with Lingo. Maybe I should have started programming
>before... Or keep on doing it after my childhood (the old BASIC
>days). But, in that case, I don�t know if I would started with
>Director.
OOP's fun once you get the feel for it. I've likened it to a pizza
shop. (I picked that analogy for my intro to OOP because I was kind
of hungry that day.)
When you call a pizza shop and order a large hand-tossed with
tomatoes and black olives, the shop itself has not suddenly popped
into existence, and they are not making the thing from scratch. All
you've done is access an *instance* of a pizza shop object, passed it
some parameters, and then receive a result. You personally do not
have to really care how exactly the pizza is assembled, baked or
delivered. That's up to the shop object.
Well, you can think of the shop as an example of a code object, a
structure that runs in memory as an instance -- a kind of program
within a program -- that can be made to do all manner of stuff for
you behind the scenes in such a way that you don't have to care how
it does it. You just send it commands and some parameters and it does
everything else, kicking out a result when it's finished.
This alone makes OOP interesting and tantalizing, but it also can
lead to very complicated looking code. That's the trade-off.
Somewhere in the design curve for a program you have to strike a
balance between how flexible, scalable and recyclable you want your
code to be, versus how quickly you want to get this *one* project
done.
Perhaps the best way to get started with OOP (as a practical method
rather than an educational pursuit) is to develop some library
behaviors of your own. When you start thinking of discrete,
standalone pieces like that, you develop a good grasp of the basic
OOP way of looking at things. Besides, once you've got a good suite
of portable behaviors, a lot of projects end up coming together a
hell of a lot faster. Just slap a few behaviors on some sprites and
you're done.
And if you believe it's that easy I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'm
interested in selling too. ;)
--
Warren Ockrassa | http://www.nightwares.com/
Director help | Free files | Sample chapters | Freelance | Consulting
Author | Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: A Beginner's Guide
Published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill
http://www.osborne.com/indexes/beginners_guides.shtml
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