CompuServe Messages

But then, the whole point of OOP design is to develop objects and the functions that act on those objects to be black boxes. Once you build an object, the only thing another programmer has to worry about is what goes in and what comes out. Whatever the object does in between is of no concern to the programmer developing it. If, for example, you define a objects of stuff and morestuff and have a function in stuff called add, and a function in morestuff called add, and you have the following bit of code(in a pseudo-OOP langage): /*adds stuff and morestuff*/ stuff thisvariable stuff thatvariable morestuff thisothervariable morestuff thatothervariable thisvariable.add(thatvariable) thisothervariable.add(thatothervariable) What "add" does is unimportant to the programmer using add. All the programmer needs to know to use "add" is what it does, not how it does it, and that means that reinventing the wheel becomes far less likely, because good OOP design means you see more black boxes than anything else. John