"Frank Swarbrick" <Frank.Swarbrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:478B4D59.6F0F.0085.0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>> On 1/11/2008 at 4:25 PM, in message
> <5uqc7fF1j5kmlU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Pete Dashwood<dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>
>> "Judson McClendon" <judmc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>> news:MWLhj.51219$N67.12522@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> "Judson McClendon" <judmc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Neither do you need to be all-knowing to see that OO is the most
>>>>>> successful paradigm to hit the computer industry. All you have to
do
> is
>>>>>> look around, and try to accept the reality of what you see.
>>>>>
>>>>> One could have made very similar statements, with the precise same
>>>>> justifications
>>>>> you used to make that one, about Communism in 1960. Did VHS win over
>>>>> Beta
>>>>> because it was superior? :-)
>>>>
>>>> Funny you should say that... I was going to use that argument and ask
>>>> if
>
>>
>>>> you still use Betamax :-)?
>>>
>>> Never had a Betamax machine; couldn't afford it. :-)
>>>
>>>> It is obvious that VHS could do the job and it could do so more
cheaply
>
>>>> than Betamax. The actual merit of both systems is a subjective
argument
>
>>>> (VHS engineers would never allow that their system is/was inferior.)
>>>>
>>>> The world voted with its feet and went VHS.
>>>>
>>>> The parallels to OO programming are pretty obvious.
>>>
>>> Actually, the reverse is true: OO is the more expensive alternative.
>>> Vastly more
>>> so in things like learning curve.
>>
>> That depends totally on an individual's ability to learn.
>>
>> This has little to do with intelligence (although that certainly
helps);
>>
>> more to do with attitude.
>>
>> I can state this unequivocally having both learned OO and taught it to
>> people with various attitudes and experience.
>>
>> COBOL people find it hard because of their ingrained ITSA; novices,
>> scripters and web programmers find it easy because they have no
>> expectation
>> or preconceived ideas about it.
>>
>> People with an open mind who can suspend ITSA, or commute it to an
>> ITSLIKE,
>> usually do pretty well, and the learning curve is NOT "vastly more
>> expensive".
>
> What is ITSA? I assume it's not "Intelligent Trans****tation Society of
> America".
>
> Frank
Sorry Frank, I should have clarified.
ITSA is a term I made up (it isn't an acronym; it simply represents "it's
a...")
I found when trying to teach OO to COBOL people that very often they
recognised similarities between OO Cl***** and structured modular
programs.
The immediate reaction was: "It's just structured modules re-invented..."
This meant that they then closed their minds and expected that they had
nothing else to learn on the subject (in many cases having used structured
modular programming for years.). As a result they missed all the subtle
but
extremely im****tant differences between OO and what they already knew, and
it made my job much harder, and their benefit from the learning time
significantly diminished. When I first encountered this I gave it a lot
of
thought and decided I needed to be able to point out areas where this
"jumping to conclusions" was occurring. I therefore gave the syndrome a
name, (ITSA) and could warn people not to ITSA a new concept when it was
introduced.
The smarter ones were able to either clear their minds or decide that
ITSLIKE is not ITSA. The im****tant think is really not to decide that
something is a re-packaging of something you already know, and therefore
"turn off" the learning process.
When learning new stuff, most of us use the "hooks" we already have from
past experience, to hang new things on.
Nothing wrong with that, and it can be very useful. But it is im****tant to
remember that just because something has some similarities with past
experience, that doesn't make it identical.
Obviously, people who didn't have a background of programming in a
procedural language didn't have the ITSA problem and therefore took to the
new paradigm like ducks to water.
Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
>
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