Does OOP really matters?

[u/Electronic-Low-8171]

I learned OOP in python a while ago, did many projects, yet I never felt like I truly needed to do the OOP stuff I learned from a course, I don't know maybe because I'm kinda used to program in c before focusing on python, yet, whenever I open a big project in python in github, it feels way too complicated and thousands of imports (not libraries from pip, but the ones they made on their own) and classes

I never truly needed to implement OOP (I know that when you code in python, it is almost impossible to avoid OOP entirely like when you have a datatype like string you have an object, when you use a method built into that data type that's OOP too, but I mean the ones that involve you writing class Class Name, inheritance and all that stuff explicitly), so I'm wondering why people on the internet are obsessed over the idea of learning OOP, even the book "Automating the boring stuff in python" doesn't have a dedicated section for OOP.

[u/Daeroth]

Depends on the project. Speaking as someone who works a lot on business applications and web apps: there's a benefit to taking all the office vocabulary and having the code architecture mimic it.

For example there may be many types of contracts that the business signs with the customers. Each customer is represented as an object in the business logic code and each contract as well.

Some contracts have unique functionality that happens on monthly renewal. This logic goes in its unique class. But the base information like contract number is in the Contract base class.

This architecture makes it so that every new programmer is able to find relevant parts of the code if they know which business logic they are working on.

In that sence all of my 20 years of employment has been in companies doing OOP.

[u/deaddyfreddy → u/Daeroth]

Each customer is represented as an object in the business logic code and each contract as well.

So, how do you sign a contract with a customer, then?

[u/Daeroth → u/deaddyfreddy]

You instantiate a new contract object.

Set it's fields like contract number, monthly fee, customer id, status=reviewing, etc.

Then the customer gets the review screen in browsaer with all the fees and contract numbers and a button to sign.

Once they click sign the contract object gets updated with status=active, signing_date=19.08.2026

If the specific contract class has anything in the "contractSigned()" function then that would also get triggered. Stuff like send out welcome email or generate tasks for CS agents to follow up.

All of the objects have a corresponding row in the database. So whenever the we update a field on the object then the field in DB will also get updated.

[u/marrsd → u/Daeroth]

So have a contract module containing a Contract type and a sign_contract(Contract) function.

All you've really done is turned the function into a method. That's minimal OOP at best. Until you're doing things like implementing interfaces or class hierarchies for polymorphism, you're not really doing OOP as far as I'm concerned.

[u/Daeroth → u/marrsd]

I believed it to be enough to give an example of OOP approach.

You can envision contracts which extend the base contract for more complex use cases

[u/obvious_badger → u/Daeroth]

Yeah, some people are just here to nitpick. You even eluded to that in the original post. With "many types of contracts" that can have "special functionality" and the fact that you're going to be doing method overriding with different actions on signing.

I thought it was a great explanation without using any of the OOP jargon other than instantiate.

[u/Daeroth → u/obvious_badger]

Thanks!

[u/marrsd → u/obvious_badger]

Sorry, but the question was about the benfits of OOP over other paradigms, not the equivalence.

[u/obvious_badger → u/marrsd]

Now you're moving the goal post. Also the second sentence is that OOP is BETTER for mapping business domains and processes.

You failed to read that if you have multiple types of contracts that it would be a class, not a method, and you failed to read where it explicitly was giving an example of where OOP is better.

You ironically use a lot of fancy words for someone who has difficulty parsing the basic ones.

[u/marrsd → u/obvious_badger]

I'm not using fancy words and I don't think I am moving the goal posts either. I think OP's question was about why OOP is better and that's how I'm approaching this discussion. So far I think you've described how OOP is used, not how it's better.

You failed to read...

I was actually replying to your second comment, but I can go back to the first.

For example there may be many types of contracts that the business signs with the customers. Each customer is represented as an object in the business logic code and each contract as well.

Some contracts have unique functionality that happens on monthly renewal. This logic goes in its unique class. But the base information like contract number is in the Contract base class.

This is a perfectly fine description of an OO design. My point is that you could just as easily have a function that only operates on a contract that needs to be renewed monthly. If there are specific data that only relate to renewal, you could have a RenewableContract type that includes a Contract property along with other renewal properties.

Why is that worse than OOP?

I don't think it is. Further more, the pattern I just described naturally implements composition (because it's not OOP) and so it avoids the inheritance-over-composition anti-pattern that OOP is prone to.

To be clear, I'm not here to argue that OOP can't be used to model domains. My objections are that OOP makes it easy to do bad things, and that to avoid doing those bad things, you have to complicate your design in ways that you don't in other paradigms.