Friday, April 07, 2006
I need a break
You know when you compile a program out of despiration while trying to fix a bug and and all you'd changed is some small thing that shouldn't have made a difference and it works but you have no idea why? Yeah, I know that feeling. I used to get that so often. Now though, those lucky saves happen less often. Maybe it's that I'm a better programmer though so I make less noob mistakes. Since I'm so much better at programming now, I make much harder to locate mistakes in much much larger programs which become so much harder to find.
Okay, I need a break from this program I've been writing for the last couple days for a class so I'll make a blog post. The program is for my data structures class and it involves using linked lists to solve massive factorials like 9999! which turns out to be a pretty big factorial. I'm writing it in Java so it goes pretty fast but I'm on my second rewrite of the program. Originally it looked like a really simple program and I thought I'd just try and write it in only a couple methods. From past projects, I know this is just horrible and I totally wasn't concerned with OO practices when I started this because I don't think I'm going to have to touch the program once I'm done with it. So after working on it for about 3 or 4 hours, I quickly realized I was going to need to start breaking things into pieces so now I've broken my whole project into a massive amount of tiny methods inside of my objects. Well, I've got a class but I dont know if you'd call it an object since it doesn't really act like an object or fit the definition very well.
I really sometimes believe object oriented programming is just about writing better looking sphagetti code. It's not like it runs any better. It was weird though. Last spring I took a Java class which was my first expierence with programming and I didn't learn a whole lot. I was an Electrical engineering major at that point. Then I got this software development internship with a company for the summer and was programming tons of stuff in C#. I learned a massive amount but I never really understood object oriented programming. It wasn't until this semester that I'm sitting in a class and it just clicks. I don't know why but it just clicked. I totally understood why it was good and all the scary things that come along with it. Here are some of my opinions on it.
- Operator overloading is an amazing feature in C++. I don't know who thought it was a bad idea to not put it in Java but I think it's great for small projects. I think it could get very confusing on larger projects.
- OO promotes way way too many bad programming practices. It promotes some nice organiaztion features though
- Code is very rarely reusable outside of the class unless it's designed to be used by an outside class at the outset.
- You can never plan enough with OO programming to get a structure thats flexible so that your code can be reused.
Well, now that I'm done with that little rant about coding. I guess I better get back to it. And to think that this assignment isn't even required but extra credit. ¶ 9:38 PM
Okay, I need a break from this program I've been writing for the last couple days for a class so I'll make a blog post. The program is for my data structures class and it involves using linked lists to solve massive factorials like 9999! which turns out to be a pretty big factorial. I'm writing it in Java so it goes pretty fast but I'm on my second rewrite of the program. Originally it looked like a really simple program and I thought I'd just try and write it in only a couple methods. From past projects, I know this is just horrible and I totally wasn't concerned with OO practices when I started this because I don't think I'm going to have to touch the program once I'm done with it. So after working on it for about 3 or 4 hours, I quickly realized I was going to need to start breaking things into pieces so now I've broken my whole project into a massive amount of tiny methods inside of my objects. Well, I've got a class but I dont know if you'd call it an object since it doesn't really act like an object or fit the definition very well.
I really sometimes believe object oriented programming is just about writing better looking sphagetti code. It's not like it runs any better. It was weird though. Last spring I took a Java class which was my first expierence with programming and I didn't learn a whole lot. I was an Electrical engineering major at that point. Then I got this software development internship with a company for the summer and was programming tons of stuff in C#. I learned a massive amount but I never really understood object oriented programming. It wasn't until this semester that I'm sitting in a class and it just clicks. I don't know why but it just clicked. I totally understood why it was good and all the scary things that come along with it. Here are some of my opinions on it.
- Operator overloading is an amazing feature in C++. I don't know who thought it was a bad idea to not put it in Java but I think it's great for small projects. I think it could get very confusing on larger projects.
- OO promotes way way too many bad programming practices. It promotes some nice organiaztion features though
- Code is very rarely reusable outside of the class unless it's designed to be used by an outside class at the outset.
- You can never plan enough with OO programming to get a structure thats flexible so that your code can be reused.
Well, now that I'm done with that little rant about coding. I guess I better get back to it. And to think that this assignment isn't even required but extra credit. ¶ 9:38 PM
