Author(s)

D. Parsons

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore two contrasting approaches to the teaching of object-oriented programming, the 'purist' and the 'pragmatic', and to describe in detail how a pragmatic approach may be formalised and implemented. 1 To be pure or not to be pure? There are two schools of thought in the arena of object-oriented languages. One is that to be object-oriented, a language must be 'pure'; Perhaps the most vocal exponent of this view is Bertrand Meyer (inventor of the Eiffel language). The alternative approach is one of pragmatism; That object- orientation is a tool like any other and that the purity of this tool is not the issue - its usefulness is the sole criteria by which it should be judged. The key advocate of

Keywords