Computer programming software

Surely this must be the dawning of the age of the acronym. I'm tempted to believe there might even be a career in the acronym/buzzword generating business.

Before we all jump on the object-oriented programming (OOP) bandwagon, it's in our best interest to find out more about the music the band is playing and the direction the wagon is moving (or have you shifted your paradigms already?).

Until someone comes up with a better acronym, I'll stick with OOP. Many people view OOP as a new programming approach that will increase programmer productivity and software reliability, eliminate the national debt and cure male pattern baldness. Where there's acronyms, there's hype.

So what is OOP exactly?

It's not simply some new features grafted onto an existing programming language. It's a new way of thinking about the process of problem decomposition, which more closely parallels that of hardware engineering. This is analogous to building a printed circuit board (application) from off-the-shelf components such as integrated circuits, capacitors and resistors (objects). These building blocks simulate or model realworld objects.

While true OOP may not exist perfectly on all hardware platforms today, it certainly is alive and well in spirit just about everywhere you turn. One emerging trend is the evolution of object-oriented computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools. These allow end users more active participation in the application development process.

Technicians are still required to define objects in one form or another, but users can assemble these building blocks (reusable code modules) to produce complex integrated applications. Users need not understand OOP terms such as encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism to benefit from the results.

As end users' needs and abilities become more sophisticated, the need for productivity enhancing software tools grows dramatically. There clearly is a great need (not to mention financial incentive) for this technology/methodology to succeed because the benefits are numerous.

The CASE/OOP combination encourages rapid prototyping which results in quickly developed applications that more closely address the users' requirements. Program maintenance costs are greatly reduced because of the real-world metaphor OOP provides.

As software component interdependence is reduced, truly reusable software becomes a reality. Working with reusable software components allows programmers to function at a higher level of abstraction (worry about the sophisticated details) since implementation details may be ignored.

I hope you like this kind of band music because you'll be hearing a lot more of it the near future.

If you haven't jumped on the OOP bandwagon yet, there's still time.