Insights Computer Language Primer - Part 1 - Comments

[.Scott]

But that does NOT even remotely take advantage of things like inheritance. Yes, you can have good programming practices without OOP, but that does not change the fact that the power of OOP far exceeds non-OOP in many ways. If you have programmed seriously in OOP I don't see why you would even argue with this.

I guess it's a matter of semantics. There was a time when OOP did not automatically include inheritance or polymorphism. By the way, the full OOP may "far exceed non-OOP", but there are still mission-critical and/or safety-minded industries where "virtual" is a dirty word.

Personally, I am satisfied when the objects are well-encapsulated and divided out in a sane way. Anytime I see code with someone else's "this" pointer used all over the place, I stop using the term "object-oriented".

 

[phinds]

...there are still mission-critical and/or safety-minded industries where "virtual" is a dirty word.

Yeah, I can see how that could be reasonable. OOP stuff can be nasty to debug.

 

[rcgldr]

What about the "dot" directives in MASM (ML) 6.0 and later such as .if, .else, .endif, .repeat, ... ?

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8t163bt0.aspx

Conditional assembly does not at all invalidate Scott's statement. I don't see how you think it does. What am I missing?

It's not conditional assembly (if else endif directives without the period prefix are conditional assembly). Some of the dot directives are like a high level language. MASM (ML) documentation refers to these a decision directives (.if .else .endif ...) and looping directives (.while .break .continue ...) . For example:

        .if     eax == 1234
        ; ... code for eax == 1234 goes here
        .else
        ; ... code for eax != 1234 goes here
        .endif

The dot directive code sequence will most likely generate the following code sequence, except that the coder didn't need to use any labels with the dot directives.

        cmp     eax,1234
        jne     short lbl0
        ; ... code for eax == 1234 goes here
        jmp     short lbl1
lbl0:
        ; ... code for eax != 1234 goes here
lbl1:

 

[scottdave]

Where does something like Scratch fall in these? Just another high-level language? Interpreted, or compiled?

 

[Mark44]

Where does something like Scratch fall in these? Just another high-level language? Interpreted, or compiled?

From the wiki page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language) -- it appears to be an interpreted language, from the comments near the bottom of that page.

 

[jedishrfu]

Where's part 2?

 

[phinds]

Where's part 2?

I've got it about 1/3rd done but it's a low priority for me at the moment

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I've got it about 1/3rd done but it's a low priority for me at the moment

No no! high priority! high priority!