Volume 7
Volume 7, Number 61 |
June 22, 2009 |
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Leslie J. Waguespack, Jr.
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Abstract: Long before the current political turbulence surrounding immigration became so wide-spread almost everyone in the computing industry recognized the term “green card” as a pocket-sized reference document describing the most commonly required detail-knowledge about a computer’s architecture (e.g. IBM 360 Green Card). It placed at ready-reach the details of formats, operations, resource locations and encodings that defined the immutable structures that a machine-level programmer would need to hold close during the programming and debugging of system software. The metaphor is used here to describe an attempt to provide the same ready-reach reference to the immutable details of the object-oriented paradigm by means of a highly distilled explanation of the terminology and operational relationships – language usually referred to as an “ontology.” The object-oriented paradigm has been “mainstream” in IS education for ten years and for some twenty years it’s been “mainstream” in IS development. Although familiar with the syntax of one or more OO programming languages, the underlying OO concepts remain a mystery to many IS students. And if the current crop of IS textbooks are any indication, they remain somewhat of a mystery to many IS educators. The “green card” described here attempts to address both concerns: offering a programming language-independent explanation of OO concepts and delivering it in a condensed format that can underpin pedagogy across implementations, languages and methodologies.
Keywords: object-oriented paradigm, object-oriented ontology, object-oriented pedagogy, object-orientation, object-orientation quick reference
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Recommended Citation: Waguespack (2009). A Two-Page “OO Green Card” for Students and Teachers. Information Systems Education Journal, 7 (61). http://isedj.org/7/61/. ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2007: §3743. ISSN: 1542-7382.)