Craig Shoemaker of the Polymorphic Podcast has just posted part one of his interview with author Dr. David West about his book Object Thinking. Craig contacted me a few months ago about my review of Object Thinking and asked if I had any questions for Dr. West. Boy do I.
Here is the list of questions I sent Craig:
- What is formalist thinking and why is it bad? It seems like such a good fit when dealing with computers.
- Why is OOP/object thinking so hard to get right? Besides making everyone read your book, how can help change a formalist culture to object thinking? Not just an individual's understanding, but the culture as a whole - like a corporate IT culture.
- Where are the future object thinkers coming from today? Methodology? (Agile? XP?) Languages? (Ruby? Python?)
- Are programming languages important? Where are we in regards to object-oriented languages? What is missing? Where do future languages need to go? Is formalist thinking reflected in language design? (I believe so.) What are the best examples of hermeneutic languages?
- How did you end up with Microsoft Press as a publisher? The book was Microsoft-agnostic, and it seemed like a strange fit to me.
- (Unsure about this question) Was the book successful? How was it received?
- What is Dr. West doing now? Teaching? Research? Slinging code?
- Does he have a blog? If not, why not?!? Seriously, he needs a blog! He is depriving the work of much needed object thinking by not having a blog.
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