A survey of experiences amongst object-oriented practitioners

The object-oriented paradigm is becoming increasingly popular as a result of expert opinion and anecdotal evidence and not on the basis of sound empirical data. The questionnaire survey was undertaken as part of a programme of research to validate unsupported claims about the paradigm. The questionnaire follows structured interviews of experienced object-oriented developers with the intention of confirming the findings on a wider practitioner group. It was posted to relevant electronic newsgroups and to members of an object-oriented (postal) mailing list. The survey received 167 responses to the electronic questionnaire and 119 responses (30% response rate) to the postal version. Results show that respondents are of the view that: (i) the object-oriented paradigm has advantages over other paradigms in terms of ease of analysis and design, programmer productivity, software reuse, and ease of maintenance; (ii) inheritance can introduce difficulties when trying to understand object-oriented software; (iii) missing design documentation and poor or inappropriate design are prevalent problems; (iv) maintenance causes degradation of object-oriented software, but less frequently than conventional software; (v) C++ has many deficiencies in comparison to other purer object-oriented languages.