I'm a proponent of Object Oriented Programming, and here's why.

Recently I started a somewhat involved project that should make it much easier for me to design web pages:

The last time I worked a large project it became increasingly difficult to manage all the code as the project grew. But as I’ve come to adopt classes and objects it has become much easier to implement and manage code.

I’m use to writing large chunks of code consisting mainly of variables, loops and functions. I usually try to organize this code by separating different types of functions into different files:

I still end up with a mess of functions. Some functions only being used once. And a mass of code I have to sift through to figure out how some variable is being used (or misused).

One thing I love about objects and classes is the organization. If I have a range of variables associated to only one purpose then I can use an object related to a purpose to store specific properties for very specific functions. For example with mouse tracking I do something like:

My new “mouse” object is it’s own nice little package with properties specific to a given function. I don’t have to think too hard about what variable I might be using for something. If it’s related to the mouse then I know it’s probably a property within the “mouse” object.

Sometimes when I’m just trying to get something to work I’ll write a bunch of code to accomplish a task. Once the code is working I’ll port it into a class so I can drop it into my code as a class whenever I need it, rather than try to figure out how to insert a bunch of functions and variables without conflicting with the code.

I recently did this with an RSS feed banner. I wrote all the code to generate a small banner with an image and top headlines from an RSS news feed.

And everything is handled inside a single class that I attach to an element on the web page:

This makes it a no-brainer to implement code as classes. As long as I know what the properties are for a class I can make the modifications I need and just use it without thinking about it.

I guess I’m a big proponent of objects and classes now. The irony is I use to have an aversion to this type of programming. My thinking being “why do they have to keep changing things”.

I know better now!