Object Oriented Philosophy

April 7, 2009 · 5 comments   139 views

in Technical Publications

Wading through the marshlands of object oriented programming, one must at one time realize that there are two fundamental skills that one needs, in order to truly embody the spirit of object oriented paradigm.

  1. The ability to abstract ones thought processes.
  2. Perceive the harmony within abstract chaos.


Abstraction as the selective examination of a problem.

The target of abstraction is to suppress the inconsequential aspects from those that define a purpose.

The idea is to stress the existence of an object rather than the consequences of it’s existence. Abstraction is always done around the fulcrum of a purpose and this very purpose defines it’s existence.

Many different abstractions of the same thing is possible, depending upon the desired purpose. All abstractions are incomplete and inaccurate. Reality itself is inaccurate; any description of it is an abridgement. All human words and language are abstract and incomplete description of reality.

Even with this fallacy, abstractions define purpose. Hence, strive not for the absolute truth but strive adequacy for some purpose.

There is no single “correct” model of a situation, only adequate and inadequate ones.

~ James Rumbaugh

 

Abstraction as the formulation of harmony within chaos.

Processes in life may appear Brownian. But to the eye, it is an unchallenged harmony of a unified purpose.

The existence of harmony is governed by the degree of adequacy of the abstraction. In turn, the existence of harmony allows us to reduce the multiplicity of the abstractions and coerce into a more definite existence of an object.

And if this existence serves our purpose, we then have an adequate abstraction!

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  • http://rishingoswami.blogspot.com/ Rishin

    As I was going through this blog, I realized that the concepts conveyed in it were applied to the blog itself. The concept of object oriented design was broken up into two primary skill sets using the concept of  “… formulation of harmony within chaos”. And the overall content was based upon abstraction of the already existing concrete concepts.
    Personally, my OOP (P-> Philosophy) is slightly different. Essentially both concepts are same, only ordered and structured differently.  However, like he quoted – “There is no single ‘correct’ model of a situation, only adequate and inadequate ones”.

    • http://www.shamasis.net/ Shamasis Bhattacharya

      Well… this is the first comment in my life that is written in third person!
      And, I am pretty interested in knowing the slightest of differences we have, in terms of OOP.

  • http://dhruvaghosh.blogspot.com/ Dhruva

    All problems eventually boil down to a problem of granularity.
    That is, the quintessential question- Where do we draw the line? (Which implicitly contains a question in itself. Can a line be drawn at all?)

    If we extend truth to have dimensional qualities, we have some comfort and, therefore, new forms of discomfort.

    • http://www.shamasis.net/ Shamasis Bhattacharya

      I get your allusions!

      I also feel that striving for the most relativistic state is equally impossible as attaining the absolute. Hence, line or no line, we will always be biased.

  • sudi

    Obessively obese philosophy
    ——-start——————–

    I see some words,
    which i can count

    colleted heap

    randomly thought
    tactfully placed

    well hailed.

    life is simpler.

    ——–end————