Artists see the world as a canvas. They represent environments, objects, and abstractions with shapes, shades, and colors. Pride and honor can be shown in a sculpture, or love may be represented with red colors and heart shapes. Architects envision the world as a blueprint; objects have structure and forces acting upon them from other objects. Just as a bridge is supported with suspension chords and metal, a family is strengthened with care and unity. Profession influences perception, and while outlooks on space and matter may differ, none are right or wrong – only different. But these professions and perspectives are kept in mind when programming languages are developed. Today, one of the most common programming ideologies is object oriented programming (OO). Object oriented programmers don’t picture the world as a canvas or blueprint; alternatively, OO programmers envision a hierarchical world composed of hierarchical objects with polymorphic, encapsulated actions and properties. There are four fundamental principles of object oriented programming: composition, inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation. Each attribute can be explained without a computer in a non technical (Java based) perspective, and some visibility represented in an Adobe Flash environment.
Scooby Doo is a famous detective dog from children TV and books. The charismatic, friendly, cute dog detective helps his friends solve mysterious.
In Java (and other OO programming languages), Scooby could be represented as a class.
public class Scooby
{
}
In Flash, Scooby can be represented as a Movie Clip with a picture of Scooby inside of it.
In this picture, Scooby has a bright, blue collar around his neck. He also has a long tail and a big nose. The idea that Scooby has these three objects and more is the composition concept of object oriented programming. Modifying the class to fulfill this design ideology is very easy in Java.
public class Scooby
{
public Collar myCollar;
public Tail myTail;
public Nose myNose;
}
ScoobyCollar, ScoobyTail, and ScoobyNose are all objects that belong to Scooby; therefore, they are stated inside the Scooby object. In Flash, a Movie Clip that is placed on the stage can have multiple Movie Clips inside of it. Consequently, a representation of Scooby in Flash could be a movie clip called Scooby with three movie clips called myCollar, myTail, myNose. Every object has its own properties and actions, and consequently Flash allows code and properties to be added to actual objects. Flash and Java are two environments that use the same idea of building blocks. The building blocks of Java are floating point numbers while the building blocks of the visual Flash environment (excluding Actionscript) are vectors, bitmaps, and video. This means that objects can be broken down to their compositions, and their compositions can likewise be broken down and eventually they will all break down into the building blocks of the language. For instance, a soccer ball has color (a hexadecimal number) with bounciness (a number), weight (number), or a logo which can be itself broken down to objects that have numerical representations. In Flash, a movie clip is composed of vectors, videos, bitmaps, or other movie clips.
Inheritance, another fundamental aspect of OO design, is the concept that every object inherits identity from another object. For example, Scooby is a dog, a dog is an animal, an animal is a living being, and a living being is… an object. Scooby is a dog because Scooby has all the properties and actions that every dog possesses. One could claim every dog barks, has four legs, and has a tail. One could also say that not all dogs have a collar, have a big nose, or a long tail like Scooby’s. Clearly, there can be an infinite amount of classes between animal and living being, but the idea is that everything (eventually) is a subset of an object. Objects have attributes from more general objects, but have specific attributes that only it and its children objects keep. In Java, this concept is represented with the extend keyword. “Scooby extends Dog” means that Scooby is a dog and inherits the methods and properties from Dog.
public class Scooby extends Dog
{
public Collar myCollar;
// Notice how tail and nose was removed from here and added to Dog
public Scooby()
{
super();
super.myNose = new ScoobyNose(); // ScoobyNose extends Nose
super.myTail = new ScoobyTail(); // ScoobyTail extends Tail
}
}
public class Dog
{
public Legs myLegs; // These properties are accessible in Scooby
public Tail myTail;
public Nose myNose;
public void Speak()
{
System.out.println(“Ruff!”);
}
}
Unfortunately, the concept of inheritance does not apply as easily with Movie Clips. Flash takes the approach that a Movie Clip is an object, and subclasses of Object are created as new movie clips and shapes are added to the original movie clip. For example, a vector drawing of a basic car is in a movie clip called Car. The developer in Flash can rename Car to BMW. According to the idea of inheritance, the car should be easily modified to create a BMW since a BMW inherits all the elements of a car (four tires, has an engine, etc..).
Polymorphism is the idea that two objects can have the same input but have a different output. A dog and a cat can both speak (which can be said to be an action of SpeakableAnimal which both a dog and a cat extend), but one says “Meow” while another says “Ruff”. In fact, Scooby says neither, he says “Scooby Dooby Doo!”
Therefore, the design needs to change in Java. The method Speak needs to be “overloaded”, which means the name of the action is duplicated but the implementation changes.
public class Scooby extends Dog
{
public Collar myCollar;
// Notice how tail and nose was removed from here and added to Dog
public Scooby()
{
super();
myNose = new ScoobyNose(); // ScoobyNose extends Nose
myTail = new ScoobyTail(); // ScoobyTail extends Tail, therefore a ScoobyTail can be constructed even though myTail is of a Tail Type
}
// Overloaded action
public void Speak()
{
System.out.println(“Scooby Dooby Doo!”);
}
}
public class Dog extends SpeakableAnimal
{
public Legs myLegs;
public Tail myTail;
public Nose myNose;
// Overloaded action
public void Speak()
{
System.out.println(“Ruff!”);
}
}
public class SpeakableAnimal extends Animal
{
public void Speak()
{
// To be overloaded
}
}
public class Cat extends SpeakableAnimal
{
public void Speak()
{
System.out.println(“Meow!”);
}
}
Movie Clips in Flash do not follow the exact same idea of polymorphism. Flash has an alternative viewpoint in objected oriented perspectives at this point. Movie Clips follow composition rather than inheritance and polymorphism. While MovieClips inherit actions from its parent Movie Clips, the parent is not ideologically the same as a super class in Java. A movie clip does not extend its parent; its parent composes of the movie clip. A Car movie clip will compose of an Engine which will have access to actionscript functions TurnOn()or Drive() defined in Car, but design-wise, Engine does not extend Car. Instead, Car has an Engine. This is where Flash’s attempt of visualizing object oriented programming starts to break down.
Flash also does not visually represent the concept of encapsulation. Encapsulation is the idea that the implementation of an action is not accessible. When a person is asked “What would be one word you would use to describe yourself” during a job interview, a thought process happens in the interviewee’s mind. What the process is the interviewer does not know; however, a one result is outputted to the interviewer by the interviewee. Since the interviewer cannot read minds, the thought process of the interviewee is considered encapsulated. In Java, classes, methods, and properties can be declared public or private. If the attribute is private, then it is used primarily for internal processes. An example could be finding the distance between two points on a two dimensional plane.
public void FindDistance(double x1, double y1, double x2, double y2)
{
return Math.sqrt(Square(y1-y2)+Square(x1-x2));
}
private void Square(double n)
{
return n*n;
}
FindDistance is a method that a user may use in their program, but the user does not know (or need to know) how that method works. The Square method is actually used by the FindDistance method, but since the user is not allowed and does not need to use the Square method, Square is declared as a private method.
Where OO programming loses its power is when describing abstract objects. For example, feelings and emotions cannot be developed easily. Love or Frustration can extend Feeling; however feelings are not necessarily objects because the concept of an object is arguably something tangible. Because Flash assumes all Movie Clips to be tangible, it is a much easier platform to develop on since positioning objects on the screen is much easier than in Java. In Java and in most programming languages, coordinates on a plane must be defined. In Flash, objects can simply be pasted on certain spots on the screen and the coordinates are automatically set into the objects.
Nevertheless, OO programming is overall a powerful language that allows programmers to design a system before actually coding a design. Especially in Flash, programmers can worry about designing a system rather than mulling over syntax. In Flash that system can be graphically represented, in Java that system can be programmatically represented, and in a designers mind that system can be ideologically represented.
