Originally published in 1995 by authors Eric Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, Design Patterns is probably the most world-changing and important text on Object-Oriented Programming written to date. The book was inspired by the idea of reusable design patterns that originated with Christopher Alexander’s book on architectural design, called A Pattern Language. The Gang-of-Four (GoF) book established a new lexicon for OOP based on their broad and extensive software design experience. [More…]

JavaScript has a unique style for Object-Oriented Programming. The style is closer to the syntax of a functional language than a procedural language. The syntax is not difficult to learn, but it behaves completely unlike what you expect from a compiled language like Java or C++. Central to JavaScript OOP is the way that new functions may be attached to existing objects. Here are a few simple example of how a JavaScript object can be instantiated and manipulated. [More…]

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in Perl is a like riding on the back of a strange imaginary beast. You eventually arrive at the destination, but explaining to someone how you got there takes some creative doing. In Part 1 of this article we look at how Perl can be used to create code that mimics Object-Oriented Programming. If we squint hard, we might even fool ourselves into thinking we’re really doing OOP, as long as we don’t look closely. So grab onto your saddle…here we go! [More…]