[ismarc]

When I first used oop, or any object orientation, it was in the early days of the public internet. There wasn't nearly the resources available now, especially for a hobbyist. So when I learned the syntax (I believe it was early c++), I had nothing else to go on. I naturally leapt to using objects to describe and build new data types. It made me think about what data I needed, then how the data needed to be operated on. It wasn't until I started taking courses that I heard the noun approach... And it just seems completely backwards. It isn't about modeling your data, it's about the conceptual items you're working on. I still think oop is a good approach if you ignore all of the 'best practices' and instead use it to build custom data types that simplify your algorithms. It's part of what I really like about Erlang records (even though they're a bit annoying to use) and Scala in general. You can build custom data types without having to just compose lists and maps but you get a lot of the benefits from functional programming.

I really don't understand why so much of the programming classes, tutorials, guides and common wisdom aren't 'data first' style design.