Object-orientated looks at objects. So look at things around you when doing object-oriented programming. Especially look for things that define classes, like chalkboards and desks.

As far as pointers go, there is one on your screen that does everything you want it to. That should be enough…

Don’t feel too bad about pointers and OOP… C and C++ are ridiculously obnoxious about how complicated they make the concepts, and they’re a large part of what scared me away from programming back in 2000.

If I were to pick up trying to program in C++ again today, I’d likely still be rather hopelessly lost because it’s been 5 years since I’ve used it, but I’d probably have a firmer grasp of OOP and pointers from dabbling with the concepts in PHP, which handles them in a fairly simple manner. Still, true 100% OOP programming escapes me, so I’m probably not the best person to try and give you (with no pun intended, I swear) pointers on the subject.

I have no idea what pointers are. Does VB. NET use them?

As far as OO goes, I don’t see what you don’t see about how to use it. Can you be more specific? Maybe VB.NET making OO incredibly effortless and powerful to use have made me not realize how complicated it is.

shrug

moiety has no idea what a pointer is?! At first that really surprised me, but I guess it kind of makes sense.

Does VB. NET use them?

Hmm, the one thing I can think of you might recognize is passing things to a function “ByVal” or “ByRef”, which I think I remember from VB.NET, but it could have been just VB. This mirrors a use of pointers in C. Passing a pointer to a function would be like passing something “ByRef”, which lets you modify the original thing, rather than a copy.

chucker:

A pointer is an address to a place in memory that a certain type of value (say an integer) is stored.

int a = 1;
int* b;

The variable a is an integer with the value set to 1, the variable is b is not an integer but an address to an integer somewhere in memory. It starts out with a NULL or 0 value.

You can get an address of any variable by using the & symbol. So the memory address of where the variable a is in memory can be retrieved by &a. The variable b and &a are both addresses, so you could…

b = &a;

Now the variable b is set to an address, the address of where the variable a is stored in memory. To get the value of what the address b is pointing at, you use the . So now, b is the same as a.

int a = 1;
int* b;

b = &a;

*b == a;   // this is true
b == &a;  // this is true

a == 1; // this is true
*b == 1; //this is true

There, that’s the very basic idea of pointers. There are many more advanced ideas, plus all the uses for them. But that’s all for now.

(Now I hope that all my tags come out right when I hit submit … )

I’m sorry, I should have made myself more clear. I know what a pointer is.

Well, then the explanation can be for moiety, and any others who don’t know what pointers are.

What I don’t know is: it seems such a crucial concept to C, yet many languages appear to get along fine without it. Why’s that? What huge advantage do pointers give? Are they a necessity to accomplish something?

Because most languages automatically handle everything as pointers for you.

In Java, I believe that when you pass a variable to a function, it automatically passes it by reference, which is passing its address instead of a copy of the value. But it doesn’t let on that what is being passed is a pointer, you can use it as if it were a regular variable.

C++ added passing by reference so you could do the same kind of thing without having to deal quite as directly with pointers. (although I’ve had some fun passing pointers by reference in recursive functions in C++. :D)

And Ruby, everything is basically a pointer. When you are using variables and passing them around, it’s passing an address around rather than the value, and the address can be used normally to access the value.

C just allows you to very distinctly control addresses and pointers. C is very low level and tries to let you control things that way. Other languages, especially new ones, take care of the pointers behind the scenes. It’s not that they don’t get along without them, they are just not making you worry about whether you are passing a copy of a value or an address of a value and properly treating something as an address or a value.

Pointers certainly have their performance advantages. Consider the following code fragment (size is some large constant):

extern int a[size];
extern int b[size];
extern int c[size];
extern int d[size];

int i;
for (i = 0; i 

Now, compare it to this:

extern int a[size];
extern int b[size];
extern int c[size];
extern int d[size];

int *aptr, *bptr, *cptr, *dptr; for (aptr = a, bptr = b, cptr = c, dptr = d; a_ptr Assuming that the value of c + size is computed only once (since it is essentially a constant), the second example will be more efficient, as less addressing calculations have to be performed.

I tried to fix your comment but I think I lost some of the code in the progress. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. I think you were using < and > signs without encoding them.

And why do you and Tay insist on using the code element for blocks of code? It’s inline, not block.

Not only does code not preserve indentation (that’s what pre — as in “pre-formatted” does); it also utterly fails to render.

I fixed your comment.

VB.NET == C# with a modified syntax

I have never disputed that.

That said — why would it not be an OO language?

Its primitive variables are non-objects, just like in most languages. There is no such distinction in Ruby.

Whenever I do something as simple as open/display a Windows Form, I use OO

Well, GUIs are (almost) always OOP anyway.