Whats Coming?

	Chapter 16 - Object-oriented Programming Foundations
	Visual C++ 6: The Complete Reference
	Chris H. Pappas and William H. Murray, III

Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies

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	There Is Nothing New Under the Sun

	Advertisers know that a product will sell better if the word “new” appears somewhere on the product’s label. If, however, the saying “There is nothing new under the sun” is applied to programming, the conclusion would have to be that object-oriented programming is not a new programming concept at all. Scott Guthery stated in 1989 that “object-oriented programming has been around since subroutines were invented in the 1940s” (“Are the Emperor’s New Clothes Object Oriented?,” Dr. Dobb’s Journal, December 1989). The article continued by suggesting that objects, the foundation of object-oriented programming, have appeared in earlier languages, such as FORTRAN II.

	Considering these statements, why are we only hearing about object-oriented programming in the closing decade of the 1900s? Why is it being touted as the newest programming technique of the century? It seems that the bottom line is packaging. OOP concepts may have been available in 1940, but we certainly didn’t have them packaged in a usable container.

	Early programmers, growing up with the BASIC language, often wrote large programs without the use of structured programming concepts. Pages and pages of programming code were tied together with one- or two-letter variables that had a global scope. The use of goto statements abounded. The code was a nightmare to read, understand, and debug. Adding new features to such a program was like unlocking Pandora’s box. To say the least, the code was very difficult to maintain.

	In the 1960s, structured programming concepts were introduced suggesting the use of meaningful variable names, global and local variable scope, and a procedure- oriented top-down programming approach. Applying these concepts made code easier to read, understand, and debug. Program maintenance was improved because the program could now be studied and altered one procedure at a time. Programming languages such as Ada, C, and Pascal encouraged a structured approach to programming problems.

	Bjarne Stroustrup is considered the father of C++; he developed the language at Bell Labs in the early 1980s. He may well be the father of object-oriented programming as we know it in the C++ language. Jeff Duntemann stated that “Object-oriented programming is structured Structured Programming. It’s the second derivative of software development, the Grand Unifying Theory of program structure” (“Dodging Steamships,” Dr. Dobb’s Journal, July 1989). Indeed, what you’ll see as we go along is that object-oriented programming, using C++, builds upon foundations established earlier in the C language. Even though C++ is the foundational language for object-oriented programming, it is still possible to write unstructured code or procedure-oriented code. The choice is yours.

	There might not be anything new under the sun if Scott Guthery’s statements are taken to mean “programming concepts,” but this chapter introduces you to the most elegant packaging method for a programming concept you have ever seen. At last we truly have the tools, with languages such as C++, to enter the golden age of object-oriented programming.

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