Comment by rottc0dd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rottc0dd | Hacker News Reader

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From my previous comment in hn:

As a java guy and think python is weird, I don't think this sucks.

But, I also agree that can serve as terrible intro to programming if you start programming right away without understanding the basics of abstractions. But, often when we have tools either designed for a purpose in mind or a dominant paridigm or reaction to existing set of tooling, this can result in understandable yet extreme abstractions.

Java is designed with OOP in mind and it kind of makes sense to have the user to think in terms of lego blocks of interfaces. Every method or class needs to have clear understanding of its users.

public - software handle is for all users

protected - software handle for current and extending classes

default - software is exposed to current package

private - software is restricted to be used in current class alone and nowhere else

So, the beginning of java programming starts with interface exposed to the user or other programmers. Is it weird and extreme. Yes. At least, it is consistent.

This heavyweight syntax has nothing do with OOP. No common definition of OOP (before Java came into existence) said that functions cannot exist outside of a class.

Java choose to adopt object oriented purity in a very weird way. Sun has initially rejected the idea of standalone functions (static import was introduced in Java 5, closures in Java 8 and compact source files/instance main is only coming now). Even with static imports and compact source files, there is still a class holding these methods behind the scenes (for practical and compatibility reasons, more than to achieve any ideological or theoretical goals at this point). That seems like Sun was trying to keep the purity of "everything is an object", but at the same time they've introduced primitive values, which are clearly not objects. This was a pretty bad decision in my opinion. There is no practical benefit from requiring every function to be defined inside a class[1]. On the other hand, being able to have methods defined on an integer is a pretty nice feature.

If we look at a Smalltalk, which is generally considered be an example of a "pure" OOP language, we see a striking difference. This is Hello World in Smalltalk:

  'Hello, world!' printNl

Smalltalk allows you to freely define functions outside of classes and even write code that is not part of a class (directly in the REPL).

[1] https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo...

I am not sure of historical significance of what OOP is, but even Alan Kay seem to agree that modern definition of OOP is not what he intended[1]. But, for better or worse we are stuck with the principles.

We even have design patterns like Command, to workaround first class functions in "pure" OOPy way.

And for enterprise software development, I like it that way. It can make up a definition it wants and stick to it. I think it is better for a language's ecosystem and culture to have one dominant paradigm than becoming kitchen sink of programming languages.

Edit: added a link

[1] softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/264697/alan-kay-the-big-idea-is-messaging

> Smalltalk allows you to freely define functions outside of classes

Please show an example.

I agree, this is the whole point of "Hello world", which is to show the boilerplate required to start a program capable of outputting text, as well as the actual code that outputs that text. It's also the chance to get the build tools setup, people forget that some of the 'boilerplate' is the actions required to build, which often are much more involved for newer tools and frameworks.

You can just say initially e.g. when I learned C++ that "#include <iostream>" can be "mostly ignored for now, but just know iostream stands for Input / Output stream, and this line is necessary to e.g. output with std::cout"; and there are no scars left from this.

Some scars... as cout << was always a bad idea, and taught people early on in their C++ development that being overly clever with operator overloading was expected

Which I think most people understood not to do themselves when they encountered their first issue with the precedence of << vs other operators in expressions they wanted to print.

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