For Sale: Abstract Base Classes

Why is it that you can't buy abstract base classes?  Sure you can buy all the concrete classes you would like... Date, Time etc etc., But when it comes to being able to buy an Employee class... well good luck.  You might find an end product such as an Employee Tracker or Employee Payroll, but they don't help in building your system.

Shouldn't Programmers Paradise have a section in their catalog "For Sale: Abstract Base Classes" get 'em while their hot!

I admit, it's probably a stupid, irrational idea, but wouldn't it advance us in the right direction towards "object reuse".

If I was building a system and needed an Employee class, I would look in the PP catalog, give 'em a buzz and for a couple bucks I could have an Employee class possibly with some derived classes to go with it.

Sounds silly but just might work...  :-(

Backspace
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

class employee
{
      virtual void outsource() = 0;
};

that'll be $740.99, please.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Genius is 1% inspiration...

Let us know how the sale of your abstract base classes goes.

Kyralessa
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

For all these abstract base classes you''d have to define some mapping to a physical store somewhere, some kind of database fields mapping.  If you do that you might as well define the presentation class and some common methods at the same time.

Simon Lucy
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Yeah, it sounds silly...

An abstract base class is basically just an "idea" cast in C++. By definition it doesn't even *do* anything (no code behind it.)

And part of what little "fun" remains in this industry is inventing things like abstract base classes for your own work.

So, buy the most enjoyable table scrap of work? Hell no!

Bored Bystander
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Isn't this what the DOM is for XML, of course its free rather than commercial.

Tony Edgecombe
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

"It's a 'Jump to Conclusions Mat'! You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could jump to!"

Tom Smykowski
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Well, building abstract base classes is, for the most part, building a framework to hang your application on.

Frameworks, as years of experience and research has shown, are vertical market specific. So you can have a windowing framework, but that won't help you with your data management.

An Employee ABC will vary so radically between verticals that it's really not worth building generically. What an employee is means something very different if you're doing payroll vs. 401k vs. tax system.

Chris Tavares
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Maybe they can sell them on iTunes for 99 cents.

m
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

>>>"It's a 'Jump to Conclusions Mat'! You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could jump to!"

That is the worst idea I have ever heard.

Michael Bolton
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

Samir
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Well, I think it would be more salable if only had two conclusions that could be jumped to: "My Boss Is Evil" and "My Boss Is Merely Incompetent".

Alyosha`
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

What someone needs to do is to modify the "Dance Dance Revolution" game controller to be a Jump to Conclusions Mat.

Hook that bad boy up to NetMeeting, and hey presto - meetings were never so much fun!

Burninator
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

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