Procedural programming with OO Language (VB.Net)

[benfree]

I am new to OO programming. I have a good theoritical grasp, but not a whole lot of practical experience. In my current job, I am assigned the task of enhancing an existing ASP .Net app (written with VB.Net). The programmer who wrote this app no longer works here, but as I was going thru his code I realised he has been doing regular procedural programming with VB .Net as well. He has used .Net classes and objects but has not created any application level objects. The two classes that he created are more like the old BAS modules in VB. All they contain are hundreds of shared methods (static in C#). These methods are called from everywhere and thereby uses these classes as a general purpose bucket for all common tasks, utilities etc.

Should I propose a re-design of this app to my supervisor? I can probably come up with an Object model and rewrite this procedural code with OO methods. Is this something that you have come upon in your projects? What is the best approach to start with redesign from Procedural to Object Oriented design?

Thanks,

Ben

 

[Polu]

Hello.

It depends on the expected future trends of your application, I think.

If low or none maintenance is expected, IMHO you should not go to your boss and say "Let's spend X months of my work in building an app that will do exactly the same as the existing app"

If some maintence is expected, may be you and your boss will prefer to maintain the existing code style, building a bad programmed, but at least consistent enviroment for the future developers.

If more maintenance is expected, you could let the existing code be but develop a new architecture for the current and future maintenance works. i.e. "We cannot afford the cost of rewriting the existing code but with a little increment in the cost of the actual enhancement, the future enhancements will be cheaper"

If a lot of maintenance is expected, you should refactor the whole thing. "Let's invest a lot of effort now, but we will save a BIG LOT of effort in near future".

Regards,

Polu.