Steve's response to the original post is a thoughtful and informative one.
My only disagreement lies in his interpretation of the underlying message of
the original post.  The point, as I read it, is not that OO has nothing new
to offer, but rather that its concepts and principles are not so very
different from concepts that have existed for a long time in the programming
discipline.  This was offered in resonse to claims that OO was so new and
different that long-time COBOL programmers would find it difficult to make
the switch.  James Byrne's post supports the contention that programming is
programming, and a good programmer can be expected to learn a new language,
even a dramatically different one, with reasonable effort.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Dirickson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 1:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Cost of migrating COBOL Programmers to Java


> In the preface to one of Kent Beck's books he writes about a
> conversation that he had with a participant of one of his
> seminars on OO design and programming.  Paraphrased and
> abbreviated it boiled down to the statement by the participant
> that "... objects are just a fancy name for a procedure call ...".
> Kent, who is a recognized authority in the smalltalk world,
> then goes on to write that he had to think about that
> statement for a time but eventually came to the conclusion
> that OO programming and design was different.

He was correct; OO design is much more than procedure calls.

(rest snipped)