Steve Jobs explains Object Oriented Programming
One of the key aspects of selling something is knowing what it is. Steve Jobs was among those breed of salesmen. For years he had great success in selling the kind of consumer electronics where others struggled. Microsoft had a tablet before the iPad. There were touch screen phones before the iPhone. There were portable music players before the iPod, yet none of them tasted the kind of success he did. Of late so many companies are playing around with the idea of virtual reality. We are still awaiting something that will be appreciated and acknowledged by the masses.
I strongly believe, at the core the person selling something relatively new to the world should first understand what it is all about. Secondly one should be able to convey what they are bringing to the table without making it seem complicated.
During his time at NeXt, Steve Jobs was selling Object Oriented systems and technology. He didn’t have a degree in computer science. I have seen many experienced CS professors struggle while explaining core concepts of Object Oriented Programming to students.
Here, in an excerpt from a 1994 Rolling Stone interview, Jobs explains what object-oriented programming is.
Jeff Goodell: Would you explain, in simple terms, exactly what object-oriented software is?
Steve Jobs: Objects are like people. They’re living, breathing things that have knowledge inside them about how to do things and have memory inside them so they can remember things. And rather than interacting with them at a very low level, you interact with them at a very high level of abstraction, like we’re doing right here.
Here’s an example: If I’m your laundry object, you can give me your dirty clothes and send me a message that says, “Can you get my clothes laundered, please.” I happen to know where the best laundry place in San Francisco is. And I speak English, and I have dollars in my pockets. So I go out and hail a taxicab and tell the driver to take me to this place in San Francisco. I go get your clothes laundered, I jump back in the cab, I get back here. I give you your clean clothes and say, “Here are your clean clothes.”
You have no idea how I did that. You have no knowledge of the laundry place. Maybe you speak French, and you can’t even hail a taxi. You can’t pay for one, you don’t have dollars in your pocket. Yet I knew how to do all of that. And you didn’t have to know any of it. All that complexity was hidden inside of me, and we were able to interact at a very high level of abstraction. That’s what objects are. They encapsulate complexity, and the interfaces to that complexity are high level.
