What would you ask an OO guru?

[lastcraft]

Hi...

Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question. I've managed to get Kevlin Henney to do an object masterclass presentation at the UK PHP Conference this year (23rd. Feb). Basically he is going to shed light on areas that upcoming OO PHP developers find difficult. Such things as the correct use of interfaces, exceptions, coding styles, agile development and building larger systems. You get the picture. Kevlin has enormous experience in these areas.

So I need your questions .

What problems would you like answered in a lecture. The lecture will be audio and hopefully video recorded. In any case I'll repost any information here.

The most popular questions are guaranteed to get in. The rest is up to Kevlin.

yours, Marcus

[Buddha443556]

What experience does he have programming in PHP?

[Cups]

What are the 2 programming books that PHP (OOP newbs) really must read?

How does he summarise the difference between Java and PHP programming?
(as it seems the best OOP books are written for Java programmers)

What are the 5 main Design Patterns that apply to "the PHP way"?
(ditto above, isolate the differences between Java and PHP)

Given that the core of PHP can be very nimble i.e. via a PECL extension pro tem, what response could PHP have given the current direction of the web, and all things web?

I'd like to hear ideas on those issues. Bearing in mind I am not a Java programmer... the only Java I know is from having to translate examples read in books, forums and wikis.

[sweatje]

What is the best methodology to move a procedural coder up the OOP learning curve?

How do you address the "impedance mismatch" between relational database design and OOP in PHP?

What methodologies and libraries/projects are useful to you for doing web development work in PHP?

What do you perceive as missing features from an OOP capabilities in the PHP language?

[HarryR]

What's the preferred strategy to take when designing a new OO system - design to be refactored, or design to be as flexible as possible?

The difference between "the PHP way" and other languages, say Smalltalk and Java would also be very interesting.

[johno]

I would love to know what he thinks about other programming paradigms and multiparadigm languages. If he likes or lacks some features from other paradigms. What does he thinks about aspect oriented programming?

Is there anything you do not like about OO, TDD, UML, agile?

Are future programming languages going to be get closer to human language or not? And why?

(Oh and I would love to hear some answers to these questions also from you Marcus.)

[McGruff]

What is the best methodology to move a procedural coder up the OOP learning curve?

Ditto.

Also, how soon should you introduce testing? Is this too much to deal with before you've begun to figure out what makes a "good object"? Or is it a great way to learn?

[teddarling]

What is the best methodology to move a procedural coder up the OOP learning curve?

I would have to agree with this one as well.

What are your favorite php resources online?

Who can we do searches for to see what information they provide? (Who do you respect in the industry?)

(Oh and I would love to hear some answers to these questions also from you Marcus.)

I think it would be great to hear from Sweatje, McGruff, Dr. Livingston and other regular posters as well.

[lastcraft]

Hi...

What experience does he have programming in PHP?

He's certainly done some consultancy work for PHP projects. He's mainly C++ and Java...

http://www.two-sdg.demon.co.uk/curbralan/kevlin.html

He's really an outsider to the PHP world, but a great speaker. He helps to supply a novel angle to otherwise purely PHP content. I feel it's the duty of a conference to introduce attendees to different experience .

When we were thinking about the talk content, I was thinking of such things as:
* Exception hiearchies - who needs them?
* What are interfaces for?
* What's a dependency and what do we do about them?
* Why is singleton evil?
* What's so hard about OO?
* What's a package? A library?
* How do we apply patterns?
* What do we lose with dynamic typing? Should we use type hints?
* What makes a good class?
* How big should a class be? How many methods?

I am sure you guys can think of a lot more .

yours, Marcus

[teddarling]

That does give me a few ideas.

When does a framework of classes go too far?

When is OO Too much?

Should apps be built to support multiple classes of similar objects? (EX. Data access for DB and XML in the same app or PDF, HTML, XML output for one page)

If dependencies are so bad, then why are patterns such as the decorator a good choice for extending functionality?

How do you build classes to allow for outside functionality without the outside class/function needing to extend or alter our classes?

I hope this might be closer to what you are looking for. I understand some of these and some I'm not quite sure of. But it's definitely nice to always have another perspective.

Thank you,
Ted

[skinny monkey]

Being that MVC is over 30 years old and was designed for desktop applications, is it still a) relevant and b) applicable to web development? Are there any new directions in web application architecture apart from adoption of the (xxx) framework?

[johno]

Exceptions:

* When to use exceptions? A golden rule perhaps?
* What is normal control flow? How to define it?
* When to use exceptions hierarchies? ($counter++ on this one)

[Mincer]

* When to use exceptions? A golden rule perhaps?

Off Topic:


I can answer that one for you johno. Exceptions are used to signify that something exceptional has happened in your application.



Though I often see code that uses them as an inter-layer messaging system, as the programmer a) doesn't understand exceptions, and b) can't design a multi-layered system. But that's a discussion for another post....

[johno]

Off Topic:


I can answer that one for you johno. Exceptions are used to signify that something exceptional has happened in your application.

Off Topic:

I know that one, but "something exceptional" really depends on how you define normal flow. Please read my post at http://forums.devnetwork.net/viewtop...=330344#330344 to get a better picture of what I was aiming at.

[FrlB]

* Many interesting discussions here seem to center around what general OO techniques (interfaces, type hints) and which patterns (front controller) apply to PHP.
* How can OO PHP programmers benefit from the imperative language capabilities? (When is a function enough?)
* Why do dynamically typed languages rock at the moment? What do they deliver what strongly typed languages don't?

[G3D]

Ditto.
Also, how soon should you introduce testing? Is this too much to deal with before you've begun to figure out what makes a "good object"? Or is it a great way to learn?

I'd be very interested in hearing the answer to this, I'm still grasping OOP so its very relevant.

[kyberfabrikken]

• I second johno on exceptions. Normal flow is highly subjective, so how does one identify that?
  
• PHP is a dynamic/interpreted language, yet it's OO architecture is inherited from Java/C++. How does this change the game? Would PHP have been better off with a class-less OO architecture?

[Dr Livingston]

Umm...

I wasn't in particular going to take part in this dicussion but since there was a request, here goes

My thoughts are these,

* What can we do to first introduce PHP to new developers, who in turn would bring fresh ideas, in regards that they could hit the ground running. By that I mean move straight to object oriented programming, best practices, etc?

* What can we do to consolidate the resources that we do have presently? By resources I mean human resources, informational resources, etc. If we could (at least) consolidate those resources, to a greater part we would remove the need for the PHP way - reinventing that damn wheel everytime.

Well, that's my thoughts anyways

[dagfinn]

Ditto.

Also, how soon should you introduce testing? Is this too much to deal with before you've begun to figure out what makes a "good object"? Or is it a great way to learn?

A sort of answer from another guru: If I remember correctly, Kent Beck has written that he taught his daughter to program at age 11, test-first from the beginning so that she had no idea it could be done otherwise.

[Buddha443556]

Because PHP is a 'runtime' language in that all scripts are compiled and executed anew on every request, how does one rectify OO design with implementation when using no more than 10 includes per request?

[skinny monkey]

Do you think the php5 object model has hindered the adoption of the newer version? Is this a reflection of the problems of any OO language or a reflection of the current target market that php is aimed at?

[Selkirk]

What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of C++?
What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of PHP?

Where would you recommend using C# or Java instead of C++?
Where would you recommend using C# or Java instead of PHP?

What do you think the C++ community could learn from PHP?
What do you think the PHP community could learn from C++?

[dagfinn]

What are the criteria for good OO design? I asked this question in comp.object at about the same time I made the post to Sitepoint, and there was some interesting discussion, but I didn't quite feel there was a recognition of the fundamental nature of the question.

[rossriley]

Long term will PHP be able to sustain itself as both a simple way for beginners to code for the web, as well as a serious OO Language for professional developers or will the presence of both goals dilute the language.

[The New Guy]

Does the aesthetics of a language affect how one designs their application?

Ruby has just taken up the challenge of improving their casual member's knowledge of language design. This was conceived to insure that future Ruby is what the community needs not what some elites think would be "cool". Considering the divide between PHP4 and PHP5 users and that PHP5 users mostly control what will be next in the language. Is this divide a dangerous to the future of PHP?

Last year it was Python and Ruby. What language will get the spot light this year? Haskell?