Object Orient Programming build-in in all versions of PB

[stephane fonteyne]

Hello Support en PB staff

OOP have the most avantages then structerd programming:
- create new classes and components
- re-use code
- polyformisme
- constructors and destructors
- objects
- in very good for more complexed applications building
- data-abstraction
- encapsulation
- inheritance
- dynamic binding
- event programming
- etc

think about it

greetings,
stephane

[Michael Torrie]

Actually, OOP is more of a design decision and coding style than actual language constructs. OOP constructs are merely syntactic sugar that do make life easier. However, it is very possible to program using object-oriented techniques in PB. I agree that PB needs OOP constructs. They would sure make life easier. But there's nothing stopping you from using objects now.

A UDT is actually a primitive (as in very simple) object. Using a UDT it's very possible to create basic, static OOP constructs. One method is to have the first parameter of a function or sub be a reference to a variable of that type. This makes a simple member function.

Inheritence virtualism, and polymorphism are all possible, but they are quite difficult, given PB's weak pointer facilities (IMHO; no casting is the main problem. Another is that calling functions by pointer requires all params to be byref). But there are workarounds. In reality, the code generated by a C++ compiler is simply static, non-OO machine code that merely simulates OO behavior. (That's a little simplistic, I'll admit)

After saying all this, I agree, PB really does need OOP stuff sooner or later.

With regards to event programming, that is a function of the OS, mainly. Under Windows, PB is event-driven, in that that's simply how windows works. Unless you're programming for a specific library or framework, DOS simply is not event-driven.

Anyway, it's worth some serious thought.