On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 11:47 -0500, Cranky Frankie wrote: > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Joseph Apuzzo <[email protected]> wrote: > > Times are tough, so we need some free things, how about a useful free > > ( not Libra ) books? > > > Joe, thank you for posting these Ruby links. They come at an > interesting time for me. > > I've been doing Database Administration for, oh, 20+ years now, and > while it's still an exciting field, especially with XML stealing > thunder from RDBMSs after all these years, I'm yearning to get back > into some programming. I have this quaint idea that I should be able > to tell a computer what to do, instead of always relying on someone > else's program :) > > My own programming background includes the standard procedural > languages, BASIC, VB, Fortran, COBOL, and PL/1 (my favorite) - no C, > unfortunately - plus various database/SQL related things. But during a > recent survey of the "modern" languages, I'm seeing of course that the > world now thinks in object-oriented terms: Java, C++, Ruby, and the > like. I'm slowly trying to wrap my head around this new (to me) way of > thinking. I mean, it does make sense: a dog is an object, and if you > call his bark() method, you don't care how he barks, you just want him > to bark. > > I have a programmer friend who tells me the real reason why o-o > succeeded so well in the enterprise is because it lets big projects be > split up easily, ie, the GUI team doesn't have to know or care what > the widget team is doing. Makes sense, I guess, but if you do even > cursory research on this topic you'll see that, like most things in > life, it's neither black or white but rather a shade of gray. > > I've been playing with Python lately. It's fully o-o but still has > enough procedural stuff to let you do simple things simply. Also, I've > been looking at JavaScript, which actually has almost nothing related > to Java, but instead is a powerful scripting language which runs in a > browser, ie. no runtime to worry about, plus everyone has a browser so > your target audience is huge. > > Anyway, thanks much for the link, and I'd love to hear some comments > on computer programming for mere mortals if anyone wants to offer > some. > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I'm in a similar situation as you, my programming education and experience predates OO programming. I've been working on learning OO design and programming.
I recently read the book "The Art of Unix Programming" by Eric Raymond. He made an intriguing point. In his view, the OO paradigm has not lived up to expectations and hype. He asserts that except for the programming of GUIs, the OO approach has not proven superior to non-OO approaches. He further asserts that the OO approach has not been widely accepted within the Unix community. (I'm making an assumption that by extension, that also applies to the Linux community.) _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Apr 7 - Nagios May 5 - Android Jun 2 - June 2010 Meeting
