Programming Concepts for the Humanities: OO Programming || Objects

Although some aspects of object-oriented programming, such as abstraction, are not too hard to grasp for Humanities students (we do love the abstract), I remember my gender theory radar going off (and the idea of not objectifying women…) when I saw this slide in my Java Programming class:

That is, in Java, “everything is an object,” and for some reason a “person” (and a female person!) was the first object that was defined by my instructors, with “cars,” “mobile phones,” and, you know, other objects (even as a feminist may define them) following suit. You see, no one thought to gently break this to a theorist-minded comparatist in the MSc program I was in, but I think if I were to teach fellow humanities grad students how to program I would approach this in a different way. (In fact, a year after my disgruntled sitting in this class, Arielle Schlesinger proposed a feminist programming language that doesn’t “[reify] normative subject object theory.”)

Without the feminist programming language, I would have to apologize for the language once I came to the idea of people being objects, but only after I discussed the desks, chairs, houses, and then the biological amoebas, plants, etc., being objects as well. Actually, probably the semantic shift to a “noun-oriented” programming language may make more sense all around (I am a language instructor after all, and we are talking about languages), with abstract nouns inherently more sensical than abstract objects, but no matter.

Gustave Doré || Canto X

To follow with the Dante’s Inferno theme from some of my previous Programming Concepts for the Humanities series, and in a manner that would even satisfy the medieval time-traveling programers among us who may consider those in Hell to be less human than those alive, I offer the Sinners as objects.

So, a Sinner would have attributes or states (or “adjectives”), things that describe or quantify it. A Sinner, at least the kind in Hell, would have the attribute of “dead,” as well as “disembodied.” She keeps her earthly name, at least according to Dante, as well as the descriptor for her place of origin (Francesca is from Rimini, Farinata is a Tuscan and also a Ghibelline), and from there students should get the idea.

Sinners also have operations or behaviors (or “verbs”), such as “cry,” “wail,” and “receive torment.”

From this basis, and perhaps explaining aspects of object-oriented programming with parts of speech, we can continue to flesh out objects with the literary example for humanities students, and also discuss class, abstraction, and inheritance.