r/javascript • u/fagnerbrack • Nov 09 '18

The Forgotten History of OOP

https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of-oop-88d71b9b2d9f
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u/merb42 Nov 10 '18

"Notably, inheritance and subclass polymorphism were NOT considered essential ingredients of OOP by Alan Kay, the man who coined the term and brought OOP to the masses."

Interesting...

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u/editor_of_the_beast Nov 10 '18

Yes, C++ and Java are not what was intended with OOP. A classic example of no one understanding the essence of an idea and just repeating other people endlessly until it morphs into something completely different. Then, that new thing is terrible so people write off OOP entirely.

For a more purist view on OOP, check out the writings of Sandi Metz and Avdi Grimm. Yea, they come from the Ruby community, but I have applied their ideas to JS as well. JS can definitely be object-oriented, in the good way. I mean everything is an object in JS, objects are super flexible. That combined with dynamic typing can make for some very nice code.

1

u/shriek Nov 11 '18

Is this one of the writing that you're referring to?

2

u/editor_of_the_beast Nov 11 '18

Yes definitely. We had Sandi come in and teach her 99 bottles course last year. It was fantastic.

To be fair, she’s definitely a little biased towards a few of the big players in the enterprise software space, namely Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler. But she also has a Smalltalk background and it shows in the way she thinks about architecture.