If I only had a mathematical brain...

I'd love to program.  I really would.  But my mind isn't cut out for it.  I've seen people who think mathematically, and I'm not one of them.  I keep  getting stuck on Trig due the to stress from each lesson that adds on top of the previous lesson.  Inane equations within equations, combined with my short memory span and occasional absent-minded backwards thinking means I have to try three times harder than someone who has math "come naturally" to them.  Instead, I have a more creative mind, endlessly thinking and imagining.  I believe this the opposite end of some spectrum, as these math wizards I've met seem to be less creative and more mechanical in thinking.

I was thinking of Game Designer as a possible option, as I can appreciate programming and understand it overall, but can't do the code for shit.  But with creativity I could create a design that programmers can work with.  The only problem is I'll be trying to work in a computer field without a CS degree, and would get little respect for not knowing the details of what a programmer is talking about.

One can tell the people who post to this thread is more than just PC magazine readers and business decisionmakers (zOMG industry industry! Deploy deploy! XML enabled video drivers please!).

>>33
for some problems it works well, for others, good old functions are better suited

Certainly; that's why I prefer C++ over Java (in fact it's the only OO language I'd be willing to use [note: I haven't taken a look at Lisp or IO yet, can't tell if they're better and if I like them]). In C++ you can wittily combine OO with traditional programming and go as low level as you need to. Add a garbage collector for your objects so it's not a pain when you're thinking high level. Juggle your types with casts when you're thinking low level. I do both, but I must admit sometimes I'm annoyed I don't have a better control of how memory is used and how data is represented in higher level languages like Perl. I, for one, like pointers better than references (though it's nice to have both, as in C++), probably because I'm used to think problems top-bottom, but think implementations from assembly and upwards (yeah I'm such a low-level freak I'm often thinking how would this code compile exactly).

The fact that Java and the like have a horribly and unnecessarily overcomplicated standard object library is not really OO's fault.
I agree. (Wait, agree is a variant of assertion which is a particular case of humanMessage which is a particular case of communication [...] and thus a particular case of theUniverse.)


>>31
if your functions are as powerful as my objects, you're using Lisp
My functions' power goes from __asm{ ... } (lol) to perhaps struct{void (*doSomething)()} thing; [...] thing.doSomething(); //zOMG is this OO!11??.

I usually stick to the the principles of "what needs to be done today and tomorrow", "reasonably fast execution" and "reasonably fast development", so I rarely touch either extreme.

Unless 'things doing stuff by themselves in a hyperparallel system' (which is the curious and nice programming paradigm of CDIV, for example), I'd rather think of doing stuff (OO is more like 'doing stuff to things so they do stuff' anyways). More particularly, I think it's fine to character.kill();, but I cringe when I have to Math.sin() or x.equals(y), because that's conceptually wrong (functions are functions, and in an equals operation both operands have the same function so they should be treated equally; besides it's me who compares, not x or y).

Ultimately, anything OO can be implemented with a subset of C99. There's not much difference, besides syntax, between sound.play(100) and play(sound, 100). The fancy features languages could have, like operator and function overloading, optional parameters, etc. can always be workarounded, though it makes your life easier until it makes it harder: it's good to use it when it saves time, but not when it makes code complicated and harder to maintain because you have to understand what do + and - do, for example.