two sides of the OOP debate

Just to show that there are two ways of looking at the parallels (or lack thereof) between the object-oriented model of compute programming and philosophy, here are some good basic “pro” and “con” arguments, both from people who know what they are talking about.

The “pro”:

“Weird! When I first came across your blog, I unhesitatingly assumed that the reference to Object-Oriented Programming was deliberate. I’m a software developer for a living, so I can say with confidence that the basic parallels are apt (the whole reason for the term in software development was a change in ‘focus’ toward objects that truly interact rather than just data structures and procedures). There are some strong nuances that might not match up (encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, etc) but reading those in would have to be pretty intentional and conscious.”

The “con” comes from Ian Bogost’s blog post back in January, which he has kindly re-sent to me:

“My worry arose not from the perception that Harman had absconded with the appellation without giving it proper credit, but because I feared the sense of ‘object-oriented’ native to computer science didn’t mesh well with that of speculative realism.

To wit, an object in the computational sense:

• describes a pattern, not a thing.
• exists in stable relation to its properties.
• exists in stable relation to its abilities.
• has direct access to other objects via their properties and abilities
• is not a real object
• (but can be made real, e.g. on magnetic tape or as a series of instructions on a processor stack)
• always relates to an intentional object (both because it is a designed object and because it strives to embody and enact direct modeling of the world)

Many—perhaps all—of the aspects above conflict with Harman’s understanding of objects and what it means to be oriented toward them (even if certain other properties of object-oriented programming, such as abstraction and polymorphism, might begin to approach the agitated relationship between objects and properties per Harman).”

FYI.