| cations (VBA), are not fully OOP languages. It is true that you could use and write COM components, which are basically objects; this is probably the reason that some people insist that VB6 is an OOP language. The lack of other OOP features such as inheritance, however, disqualify previous versions of VB from being an OOP language (for the criteria of an OO system, see Chapter 2 of Bertrand Meyer''''s Object-Oriented Software Construction, Second Edition).
It is probably more appropriate to categorize the old VB into something between a procedural language and an OOP language. This is bad news for those wanting to learn VB.NET. Researchers have been arguing about the best way to teach OOP at school; some argue that it is best to teach procedural programming before OOP is introduced. In many curricula, we see that the OOP course can be taken when a student is nearing the final year of his/her university term.
More recent studies, however, have revealed the contrary. Michael Kolling, from the School of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, Monash University, Australia, explained in one of his papers why learning OOP seems harder than learning structured programming. He and other experts argue that it is how OOP is taught, not OOP itself, that makes it such a difficult task.
Someone with procedural programming skill thinks in a paradigm very different from how OO programmers view and try to solve problems. When this person needs to learn OOP, he/she has to go through a paradigm shift. It is said that it takes six to 18 months to switch your mindset from procedural to object-oriented paradigms. Another study shows that students who have not learned procedural programming do not find OOP that difficult.
Now the good news. VB.NET is a relatively easy language to program with. VB.NET programmers do not need to worry about pointers, don''''t have to spend precious time solving memory leaks caused by forgetting to destroy unused objects, etc. The .NET Framework also comes with a very comprehensive class library with relatively very few bugs in its early version. Once you know the nuts and bolts of OOP, programming with VB.NET is easy.
ConclusionThis article has presented the main benefits of OOP and why procedural programmers find it hard to learn OOP. OOP is great for writing many types of applications. A word of caution, though: OOP is not everything. For example, some people cannot be convinced that using OOP is better at solving engineering or quantum mechanics problems than procedural programming.
Budi Kurniawan is an IT consultant specializing in Internet and object-oriented programming, and has taught both Microsoft and Java technologies.
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