Procedural code vs Object Oriented code

Procedural programming follows top down approach. Control flows from the top to the bottom.

Let's assume that we are building a ticketing system for a park. Right now there is only one rule. The adults will pay the full price and the young people, who are of age less than 18, will get a 20% discount on the price.

Let's see how we can implement this solution using procedural style of programming.

1 # This is an input to the program.
2 # Let's assume that the age of the person is 12.
3age = 12
4
5FULL_PRICE = 20
6DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG = 20
7
8def is_young
9  age < 18 ? true : false
10end
11
12new_price = is_young ? FULL_PRICE * (1 - (DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG.to_f/100)) : FULL_PRICE
13
14puts "The price of ticket for a #{age} years old person will be $#{new_price}."
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In the above case we have a method called is_young. It's a bit of simplification but in the older programming languages it is also called subroutines or procedures. This is why this style of programming is called "procedural style" because this style makes use of procedures.

In the Object Oriented World we would solve the same problem using classes. Let's now solve the same problem using Object Oriented style.

1class Person
2  attr_reader :age
3
4  def initialize(age)
5    @age = age
6  end
7
8  def is_young
9    age < 18
10  end
11end
12
13class Ticket
14  FULL_PRICE = 20
15  DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG = 20
16  attr_reader :person
17
18  def initialize(person)
19    @person = person
20  end
21
22  def price
23    person.is_young ? FULL_PRICE * (1 - (DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG.to_f / 100)) : FULL_PRICE
24  end
25end
26
27age = 12
28person = Person.new(12)
29ticket = Ticket.new(person)
30puts "The price of ticket for a #{age} years old person will be $#{ticket.price}.
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Both the style of programming gets the work done. However the procedural style takes only 11 lines of code while the object oriented style takes a whopping 30 lines of code.

At this time it might seem that procedural style of programming is better. It's shorter and it's easier to follow.

Summer break and more discounts

Our park is doing well and after a few months of the opening of the park we got the following requirements.

• All folks above the age of 60 should have 10% discount.
• All Adults will get 5% discount but only on Tuesdays.
• During summer break (month of June) people below the age of 18 will get an additional 10% discount.

Let's incorporate the above requirements in the procedural style first.

1require "date"
2age = 12
3
4FULL_PRICE = 20
5DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG = 20
6DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_ADULT_ON_TUESDAY = 5
7DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_SENIOR = 10
8DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG_IN_SUMMER = 10
9
10def is_young
11  age < 18 ? true : false
12end
13
14def is_adult
15  ((age >= 18) && (age < 60)) ? true : false
16end
17
18def is_senior
19  age >= 60 ? true : false
20end
21
22def is_today_tuesday?
23  Date.today.strftime("%A").downcase == "tuesday"
24end
25
26def is_current_month_june?
27  Date.today.strftime("%B").downcase == "june"
28end
29
30def discounted_price(discount_in_percentage)
31  FULL_PRICE * (1 - (discount_in_percentage.to_f/100))
32end
33
34new_price = FULL_PRICE
35
36if is_young
37  new_price = discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG)
38
39  if is_current_month_june?
40    new_price = new_price * (1 - DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG_IN_SUMMER/100)
41  end
42end
43
44if is_senior
45  new_price = discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_SENIOR)
46end
47
48if is_adult && is_today_tuesday?
49  new_price = discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_ADULT_ON_TUESDAY)
50end
51
52puts "The price of ticket for a #{age} years old person will be $#{new_price}."
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Here is the Object Oriented version.

1require 'date'
2
3class Person
4  attr_reader :age
5
6  def initialize(age)
7    @age = age
8  end
9
10  def is_young
11    age < 18
12  end
13
14  def is_adult
15    (age >= 18) && (age < 60) ? true : false
16  end
17
18  def is_senior
19    age > 60
20  end
21end
22
23class Ticket
24  FULL_PRICE = 20
25  DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG = 20
26  DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_ADULT_ON_TUESDAY = 5
27  DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_SENIOR = 10
28  DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG_IN_SUMMER = 10
29
30  attr_reader :person
31
32  def initialize(person)
33    @person = person
34  end
35
36  def price
37    if person.is_young && is_current_month_june?
38      new_price = discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG + DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG_IN_SUMMER)
39    elsif person.is_young
40      discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_YOUNG)
41    elsif person.is_senior
42      discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_SENIOR)
43    elsif person.is_adult && is_today_tuesday?
44      discounted_price(DISCOUNT_IN_PERCENTAGE_FOR_ADULT_ON_TUESDAY)
45    end
46  end
47
48  private
49
50  def discounted_price(discount_in_percentage)
51    FULL_PRICE * (1 - (discount_in_percentage.to_f / 100))
52  end
53
54  def is_today_tuesday?
55    Date.today.strftime('%A').downcase == 'tuesday'
56  end
57
58  def is_current_month_june?
59    Date.today.strftime('%B').downcase == 'june'
60  end
61end
62
63age = 12
64person = Person.new(12)
65ticket = Ticket.new(person)
66puts "The price of ticket for a #{age} years old person will be $#{ticket.price}."
67
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Notice that in the Procedural style we keep adding methods as we need them because of its top down approach.

In the Object Oriented style we have a place for everything. Anything that has to do with the attributes of a person will go to the Person class and anything that has to do with ticket and pricing will go to the Ticket class.

In the Object Oriented style if the complexity in the Ticket class grows too much the we can create a new classes to take some load off of the Ticket class.

Group buying and reservations

A few months later we got some new requirements.

• People should be able buy tickets online for future date. It means now we need to deal with reservation. People should be able to cancel the reservations.
• Park has limited parking facility and now folks can also reserve parking spot.
• Park has started offering group purchase. If a group of 10 people buy the tickets together then there is 20% discount. If the group consists of 20 people or more than there is 25% discount.

As we can see the complexity in the logic keeps increasing.

In a procedural style because of its top down approach we will have many methods all one after another and soon things will be less manageable.

In the Object Oriented style we can create new classes like Reservation, GroupPurchase, Parking to manage such complexities.