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Classification according to type vs function - An anecdoteHi guys, I would like to share with you a silly experience that happened over the weekend that got me thinking about object orientation/classification and how it affects, (and was affected by) the different ways in how individuals classify and manage bits of information or real objects in the world around themselves. I recently bought a painting for my girl-friend's lounge, but I didn't get a chance to put it up for her over the weekend, so she got her father to come around to do it for her. He brough along his toolbox (he sells professional tools (Snap-on, KingTony, etc) for a living, so he's a DIY type through and through). Something came up however just as he was about to put the painting up, so he just neatened everything up and left the tools there for me to use. The art gallery I bought the painting from, kindly and conveniently included a number of frobbitzim, such as hooks, masonry nails, wood screws for the frame, string, etc, all in a little plastic bag. So last night I get a chance to put the painting up, and lo and behold, the plastic bag with all the goodies is nowhere to be found. Aggravated, and cursing and muttering, I strip-search the apartment, including her father's toolbox, and the baggie is still nowhere to be found. So Iresort to looking in the trash. There it is, the plastic bag. But empty. And the goodies are not in the trash along with it. So I go take a close look at the toolbox. My g/f's father decided that, as part of the neatening up, the frobnitses needed sorting as well. His toolbox includes one of those organiser things on the side, so he put the the screws along with their little friends in the screw compartment, the masonry nails along with the existing nails in the nails compartment, and the hooks in the 'misc' compartment, and so on. The string defied classification so it ended up in the bottom of the toolbox. The baggie itself ended up in the trash because it didn't have a purpose anymore. So here I am aaarghing away, scratching through all the compartments to find MY frobbnitzes, all the while muttering under my breath: why?....why?....why oh why oh why? All of this was perfectly acceptable to my girlfriend as well, who obviously thinks exactly like her father. To them, it's perfectly logical to classify and group things according to type, instead of according to function. To my way of thinking, the plastic bag was a perfect object that encapsulated all of its members, and the whole's purpose was OBJECT_TYPE_FOR_ERECTING_PAINTING, so leave it be, darnit! To me it doesn't matter that a screw is of type TScrew, what was important to me was that I had a number of different types that belonged together as a functional whole, grouped according to one singular purpose. The object-oriented programmer in me was screaming inwardly at what I thought to be a very illogical thing to do, but obviously the difference is in human perspective and way of information classification. I wonder now if OOP is not hard for some programmers to grasp simply because intuitivly they classify information according to type instead of function, and because they think in terms of data pools that are manipulated using functions or operators. By Riaan Moll at 2005-11-09 07:48 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 12601 reads
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