Message-Passing Exercise

Proposal:

• Traditional procedural APIs are rigid and slow down development.
• Better instead to use a message-passing approach.
• Example: simple game program. Moves "sprites" in one dimension, checks for collisions.
  • game1.cc: initial implementation using traditional OOP.
  • game2.cc: reimplemented using messages.
  • game1a.cc: game1.cc restructured to hold all sprites in a single object.
  • game2a.cc: game2.cc restructured to hold all sprites in a single object.

Claims:

• The message passing version has no APIs or dependencies
• Easier to make changes with the message passing approach; e.g., Game class didn't change at all in game2a.cc
• Shouldn't define APIs before you know how you're going to use them
• The message-based approach works even better with larger systems