Procedural or Object-Oriented?

The title might be misleading to some people, certainly, when you are writing Java code you are breaking things into objects. So, please let me define what they are about:

• Procedural -- Code written in procedural and sequential style. Uses primitive types and common data structures. Multiple steps and conditions are defined in a single or few massive methods to reach program to a happy state.
  
• Object-Oriented -- Code written in object-oriented style. Uses beans, DAOs, manager objects, etc. Code is constantly refactored, such as decomposing and using "extract method".

Recently, I have been working on some pieces of code and I came to a point to discuss with a friend this afternoon. He talked about the advantages of procedural style over overly-designed and object-oriented style, esp. when you are writing integration code and business process.

For example, in a procedural manner,

public MyActionClass{

public void doAction(){

Map vars = new HashMap();

if(condition1){
  SomeClass.doSomething(vars);
  SomeClass.doTransaction(vars.get("var1"));
}
else{
  // .. Something similar
}

SomeClass.finalizeSomething(vars.get("var2"));
}
}

In an object-oriented manner,

public MyActionClass{

public void doAction(){

MyActionContext context = MyActionThreadLocal.getContext(); // Or a bean, or something similar

if(condition1){
  doTransactionForCondition1(context);
}
else{
  // .. Something similar
}

SomeClass.finalizeSomething(context.getVar2());
}

protected void doTransactionForCondition1(MyActionContext context){
  SomeClass.doSomething(context);
  SomeClass.doTransaction(context.getVar1());  
}
}

Whatever above is just a very small piece of code, imagine in a class with complex business logic, how much they both can grow.

Maintainability is something subjective which I have to say. In a business world, code is subject to change as new requirements come in every day (expectedly). Procedural style coding might seem lengthy but it does not hide too much (object-oriented is a black-box). Object-oriented style coding is not unnecessary but not overly-designed and should be discouraged when you are working on something that is established or recognized by a group which you might handover stuffs to.

Your say?

- yc, fowler-ed then rob-ed