You are where I was about 3 months ago on this issue. And I agree IF we continue using OOP as THE way to program, everything you’ve said is true.

However, I don’t have much hope of the industry providing the type of support that’s need to make OOP really work.

Unless, of course, managers stop treating programmers as little robots they can talk to and out comes code and treat them as humans who need to be constantly trained, mentored, and capable of making mistakes.

The problem is systemic and needs a systemic solution. Therefore, I propose trying to find a programming language/environment that works the way we think rather than the way things operate. IOW, neither procedural nor object oriented programming are the ultimate solution. But, if I had to pick one or the other as a manager, I’d probably pick procedural even though as a programmer I believe oop is a better programing model to work with.

Actually, if my shop was big enough, I’d try to structure my project so that the new programmers were primarily doing procedural coding and the older programmers, who understood it, were doing object oriented programming, and I’d provide a growth path that would mentor the new programmers up to where they could be object oriented programmers. Unfortunately, most shops aren’t big enough to pull that off.

My current thinking is that there needs to be more opportunities and even requirements for mentorship and continuing education in the field.

You can learn enough about OOP to pass tests with an A, but until you have to start to apply the ideas, it never really gels.

Every time I force myself to go back and reread some of the basic material, I find ideas finally clicking into place.

Having started in procedural programming, I instinctively think that’s the wrong route to go. OOP really can result in more understandable, easier to maintain code. But in line with what I understand as your theme, it has to be well-designed OOP. Bad OOP is usually just procedures wrapped in classes.

Programming is more than just understanding syntax. I think the industry as a whole needs to find a better paradigm to realize there is a growth path — we have to expect that brand-new programmers are going to struggle and we have to learn how to provide continuing education. And I think that would be as true in a pure-procedural world. If it was that much simpler, OOP would never have taken the hold it has.

stepping away for a bit helps, but like you said, what needs to be done is to patiently observe, often step-by-step, what is *actually* happening. that usually helps reveal that what i assumed was happening, was not.

i’d add that this is especially true if working by oneself. if i can get someone else to look at it, they essentially will do the same thing, just not assume what i have been taking for granted all along. i’ve also found in those conversations that as i describe what it should do, to someone who is fresh to the problem, and walk through the code with them .. that sometimes that brings those assumptions to light too.

If I wanted to illustrate how to load from a directory outside of the default directories, I would have used LoadFrom, or some other method that did that.

The problem with LoadFrom is that it is as equally confusing because then everyone would think that LoadFrom is the way to load an assembly. Most of the time it is not.