I thought it would be a really good idea to share interesting interview questions, especially the ones that caught me off guard!
I found this title to be a very interesting question… I’m not sure it was intended as an open-ended question, as I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. It really depends on your perspective. Are you looking at it from a purely technical or logical (modeling/solution) perspective? Even though I might be considered very technical, I prefer to stay out of the really low level stuff. Sure it is fun, to get down to the bare metal once in a while, but I get more enjoyment out of the thought process. Claiming to be a very Object Oriented person and stumbling on this question really bothered me… I came home and did some Googling, but really never found the answers that seemed to live up my expectations. Next, I sent an mail to one of my pals who just loves the nuts and bolts… In his typically witty way, he rattled off: int, float, boolean, double, long, and char. A completely valid answer! He then have me six other bullets which I have merged into the table below and tried to expand upon.
Primitives
The interviewer lead me with this one, which it is actually pretty obvious when you think about it! This is really not disputable, primitives are not truly objects. I think for historical reasons, namely performance and ease of use, developers were pushed to primitives. With modern JVMs and Java 1.5 autoboxing, I feel like this flaw is slightly minimized. However, from a purest OO perspective this is a valid reason.
Constructors
The interviewer also talked about the limitation where constructors can only return an instance of itself, the specific class; which has lead to the creation of factory patterns and DI frameworks. Having been a Spring Framework fanatic for so many years, I have probably developed a different style of programming which as shielded me from this issue. With some of the more dynamic OO languages, you can apparently return a different type instance from the constructor. I need to study some more on this, but did find an interesting Ruby thread. Ruby is definitely on my learning list, so I have to stop blogging!
First Class Objects
This reason takes us to pure object orientation. I’m going to gloss over this a little and let you read more on your own as I did today, try this simple search. One of the more obvious distinctions, would probably be the meta data / class model provided by Java.
Statics This is actually one of my pet peeves. I am a no fan of static methods. For me it is simple, statics equal functions which equal non object oriented. I have always bought into the DI propaganda which states that static objects and methods are untestable, which I fundamentally agree with. However, I did recently discover there are are several mocking frameworks that can actually mock out static classes and methods. This is pretty cool, but unnecessary in my preferred design and implementation style.
Read more: Soapbox Rants and Raves
I found this title to be a very interesting question… I’m not sure it was intended as an open-ended question, as I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. It really depends on your perspective. Are you looking at it from a purely technical or logical (modeling/solution) perspective? Even though I might be considered very technical, I prefer to stay out of the really low level stuff. Sure it is fun, to get down to the bare metal once in a while, but I get more enjoyment out of the thought process. Claiming to be a very Object Oriented person and stumbling on this question really bothered me… I came home and did some Googling, but really never found the answers that seemed to live up my expectations. Next, I sent an mail to one of my pals who just loves the nuts and bolts… In his typically witty way, he rattled off: int, float, boolean, double, long, and char. A completely valid answer! He then have me six other bullets which I have merged into the table below and tried to expand upon.
Primitives
The interviewer lead me with this one, which it is actually pretty obvious when you think about it! This is really not disputable, primitives are not truly objects. I think for historical reasons, namely performance and ease of use, developers were pushed to primitives. With modern JVMs and Java 1.5 autoboxing, I feel like this flaw is slightly minimized. However, from a purest OO perspective this is a valid reason.
Constructors
The interviewer also talked about the limitation where constructors can only return an instance of itself, the specific class; which has lead to the creation of factory patterns and DI frameworks. Having been a Spring Framework fanatic for so many years, I have probably developed a different style of programming which as shielded me from this issue. With some of the more dynamic OO languages, you can apparently return a different type instance from the constructor. I need to study some more on this, but did find an interesting Ruby thread. Ruby is definitely on my learning list, so I have to stop blogging!
First Class Objects
This reason takes us to pure object orientation. I’m going to gloss over this a little and let you read more on your own as I did today, try this simple search. One of the more obvious distinctions, would probably be the meta data / class model provided by Java.
Statics This is actually one of my pet peeves. I am a no fan of static methods. For me it is simple, statics equal functions which equal non object oriented. I have always bought into the DI propaganda which states that static objects and methods are untestable, which I fundamentally agree with. However, I did recently discover there are are several mocking frameworks that can actually mock out static classes and methods. This is pretty cool, but unnecessary in my preferred design and implementation style.
Read more: Soapbox Rants and Raves