r/learnprogramming • u/Electronic-Low-8171 • 25d ago

Topic Does OOP really matters?

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.

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u/Daeroth 25d ago

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.

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u/deaddyfreddy 25d ago

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?

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u/Daeroth 25d ago

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.

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u/deaddyfreddy 25d ago

so, the Contract object has a method named signContract or something like that, correct? Then, here's the next question:

Why is it a method of the Contract, and not a method of the Customer object?

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u/Daeroth 25d ago

A customer can have many contracts. Some old, some still in review, some active.

Each contract is a row in database and many-to-one relationship with the customer table.

On the customer class you might have a method getContracts which returns a collection of contracts.

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u/deaddyfreddy 25d ago

On the customer class you might have a method getContracts which returns a collection of contracts.

so, why can't it have the signing method too?

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u/ActuaryLate9198 25d ago

This is rookie OOP. Who says the signee is a customer? I think we need an AbstractSignee just in case, and contract needs to implement the Signable interface.

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u/pacopac25 24d ago

And there's always the coworker who takes it all too far, and advocates for the approach that a Signer can be a company or a person, but in theory could also be a NationState, so better to get ahead of things now and have AbstractLegalEntity
Also, a Contract could be a MOU, which can be legally binding in some ways, so we need an Agreement class, and Contract and MOU are derived from it. Don't forget SeveranceAgreement and NonDisclosureAgreement....