[Gllug] More Microsoft patents

[rich at annexia.org]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 02:26:12PM +0000, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> A good OO model is worth a lot, though a depressing number of coders
> simply don't understand OO, which doesn't help.  Not that I'm claiming
> that either C++ or Java has one.

The problem comes at both ends: there are a lot of coders who don't
understand OO; but there are also a few good coders who fully
understand OO and don't like it. Or parts of OO anyway.

One of my gripes is that inheritance is rarely a good way to extend
the functionality of code - except in limited ways that the original
programmer of the base class anticipated, and even then you're limiting
expressibility.

By contrast, an excellent way to extend code is through mechanisms
which look like Apache's module API. The success of Apache and the
number of extensions, and crucially the fact that you can combine
different extensions together easily using a configuration file attest
to that. (Another good way is through Unix shell scripts, the system()
call, and pipes).

Rich.

/me wishes he's implemented an Apache module mechanism for Net::FTPServer
instead of relying on inheritance ...

-- 
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
C2LIB is a library of basic Perl/STL-like types for C. Vectors, hashes,
trees, string funcs, pool allocator: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/c2lib/

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug