January 2007

One of the things about technical concepts and definitions as they seep into the popular consciousness is that they change. This has happened with object orientation turning the definition from one based on self-contained actors communicating through messages to one where inheritance has become the defining feature. In _The three pillars of Object Orientation_ I've tried to show what the older definition of object orientation is all about.

That many people conflate object orientation and inheritance is I suspect largely under the influence of C++ and Java and more subtly the Liskov Substitution Principle, which for some reason I don't fully understand focuses on inheritance rather than polymorphism in general.

Somewhat related of course is the idea of encapsulation. Encapsulation is a Good Thing™ is part of the On following rules series (which I'm pleased has been picked up by Glenn G. Chappell at University of Alaska Fairbanks for his Computer Science classes these last two semesters).

I've also made a couple of small changes to the CSS this month which should make the site easier to use on a small screen. So far though I've only really seen it work on [Opera's mobile browser](http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/). It looks to me that the other browsers aren't reading the media types properly in the CSS file.

Also on the site I'm testing the new file upload feature of FOST.3™. This is why there are suddenly three new pictures this month. It means I'll probably be uploading a lot more pictures from now on, but I'm unsure as to how many I'll announce on the front page (and hence also in the feeds).