jeffery@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM (Jeffery Cavallaro) (02/13/91)
Greetings from a new reader. It seems that the Government has a new buzz-phrase: "object-oriented analysis, specification, and design". Recent contract trends lead me to believe that the Government feels that OOD will cure all software ills...just like ADA. In fact, people are selling ADA in briefings and papers as totally supporting OOD (well, only half say that. The other half admit the absence of class/ inheritance-type things and call ADA an "object-based" language, whatever that is). It appears that OOD is suffering from what all other buzz targets suffer from - "what it is" and "what it isn't". I have read a couple of internal papers that claim to explain how OOD was used on a project...but all that I can glean from the descriptions is application of proper, modular design. I thought that OOD was pretty straightforward...class/inheritance, etc. It also appears that people are expecting too much. Granted, reusability of objects within a system is very powerful, but in my opinion, inter-system reusability and mass integration on the COTS level is a bit of a pipe-dream at the present time. Personally, I would like to see a consortium that deals with integrability standards, of which OOD would play an important role. Anyway, any thoughts and/or experiences from others along these lines would be greatly appreciated. Again, I am a new reader of this list, and this may have been hashed about for some time, so I apologize in advance for bringing up old news.