William B. Sanders

Learning OOP with weakly typed web programming languages: adding concrete strategies to a PHP strategy design pattern

While strongly typed languages such as C++ and Java are taught using OOP principles and design patterns; weakly typed Web programming languages like PHP and JavaScript often are not because of weak typing. As the weakly typed languages themselves incorporate more OOP structures, such as type hinting in PHP 5.1, educators need to consider ways to include OOP practices in courses where weakly typed languages are taught. This paper suggests one way to introduce OOP principles is through design patterns. Using design patterns educators can introduce both design pattern structures and OOP principles while revealing the practicality of both.