Getting my head around object oriented programming

Question

I am entry level .Net developer and using it to develop web sites. I started with classic asp and last year jumped on the ship with a short C# book. As I developed I learned more and started to see that coming from classic asp I always used C# like scripting language. For example in my last project I needed to encode video on the webserver and wrote a code like

public class Encoder
{
    Public static bool Encode(string videopath) {

        ...snip...

        return true;
    }
}

While searching samples related to my project I’ve seen people doing this

public class Encoder
{
    Public static Encode(string videopath) {
        EncodedVideo encoded = new EncodedVideo();

        ...snip...

        encoded.EncodedVideoPath = outputFile;
        encoded.Success = true;

        ...snip...
    }
}

public class EncodedVideo
{
    public string EncodedVideoPath { get; set; }
    public bool Success { get; set; }
}

As I understand second example is more object oriented but I don’t see the point of using EncodedVideo object.

Am I doing something wrong? Does it really necessary to use this sort of code in a web app?

Answer 1

someone once explained OO to me as a a soda can.

A Soda can is an object, an object has many properties. And many methods. For example..

SodaCan.Drink();

SodaCan.Crush();

SocaCan.PourSomeForMyHomies();

etc...

The purpose of OO Design is theoretically to write a line of code once, and have abstraction between objects.

This means that Coder.Consume(SodaCan.contents); is relative to your question.

An encoded video is not the same thing as an encoder. An encoder returns an encoded video. and encoded video may use an encoder but they are two seperate objects. because they are two different entities serving different functions, they simply work together.

Much like me consuming a soda can does not mean that I am a soda can.

Answer 2

Neither example is really complete enough to evaluate. The second example seems to be more complex than the first, but without knowing how it will be used it's difficult to tell.

Object Oriented design is at it's best when it allows you to either:

1) Keep related information and/or functions together (instead of using parallel arrays or the like).

Or

2) Take advantage of inheritance and interface implementation.

Your second example MIGHT be keeping the data together better, if it returns the EncodedVideo object AND the success or failure of the method needs to be kept track of after the fact. In this case you would be replacing a combination of a boolean "success" variable and a path with a single object, clearly documenting the relation of the two pieces of data.

Another possibility not touched on by either example is using inheritance to better organize the encoding process. You could have a single base class that handles the "grunt work" of opening the file, copying the data, etc. and then inherit from that class for each different type of encoding you need to perform. In this case much of your code can be written directly against the base class, without needing to worry about what kind of encoding is actually being performed.