Objects of our desire: empirical research on object-oriented development

• Authors: Bill Curtis
• Venue: Human-Computer Interaction
• Year: 1995

Object-oriented (OO) design and programming trace their lineage to research on abstract data types in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they did not become popular software development techniques until the late 1980s. In all this time there has been little serious empirical or experimental study of OO techniques. What usually passes for evaluation is either a testimonial from an industry pundit who may have developed a small application using an OO technique, or the report of a successful application by an advanced development group. It is curious that industries which perform sophisticated return on investment analyses of investments in plant and equipment will commit billions of dollars to investment in software development which uses new techniques that have received little to no valid empirical evaluation. Empirical studies of OO design began appearing in the early 1990s (Boehm-Davis & Ross, 1992; Détienne, 1990; Kim & Lerch, 1992; Rosson & Alpert, 1990). The handful of research papers produced by these scientists is buried under the avalanche of uncritical testimonials appearing in the computing trade press. OO techniques have even made the covers of venerable business periodicals where they were claimed to be causing a revolution in software technology. It seems that computing revolutions are measured primarily by deployment, somewhat less by successful implementation, and far less by actual cost benefits. Unfortunately, many companies who quaffed an OO elixir did not recover immediately from the software maladies that afflicted them. Although excellent textbooks on OO methods are now available, there is tragically little empirical research on their application. Even worse, this special issue of Human-Computer Interaction will be read by very few of the thousands of the people who read Computerworld, Information Week, Datamation, Software Development, and the other trade press periodicals in which OO methods are touted as often as explained. The results reported in this special issue are promising, but simultaneously they provide sobering expectations about the effort involved in obtaining the benefits of OO methods.