Considering the Target Reader

Exercise 1: Examine the example of student writing below.

 If you are not familiar with computer programming, what parts of the text are difficult to
understand?
 If you are familiar with computer programming, what parts of the text do you think will
be difficult for non-specialists to understand?
 How could the text be made clearer for a non-specialist reader?

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming pattern which considers “objects” as the

kernel. Objects, which refer to concepts created especially for OOP, contain specific data and
code in the forms of attributes and methods respectively [1]. Therefore, the essence of OOP is
the abstract thinking process reflected by building a model, or technically, an object. There is
also a special concept in OOP called encapsulation which refers to the process that makes sure
each object stays independent.

Although to some extent the old-fashioned high level programming languages, such as Pascal
and FORTRAN, offered much flexibility compared with low level programming languages like
assembly languages, which were used even earlier, they still failed to deal with larger programs
[2]. It does not mean that other paradigms are not able to compile complex programs at all.
However, the greatest problem for non-OOP languages is that the complexity often booms
exponentially as the demand keeps rising and it soon goes out of the comprehensible range of
programmers.
…
After stipulating variables as private or protected in Java, designated forms of external access
will be forbidden [3]. Additionally, extra and repeating work can be avoided when refactoring
the attributes of objects. Since external code merely invokes attributes using variable names
instead of actual data, authors just need to change the representation of data internally.
However, for non-OOP languages, a slight modification of data might require changes
throughout the whole program.

Exercise 2: Consider your own topic.

 What terms or ideas might be difficult for someone not in your major to understand?
 How can you explain them clearly to these readers?