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Exploring Solution Spaces, Keith Ray's blog on Software development and other topics.
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2005.Dec.07 Wed
Minimal versus "Humane" Class API Design
Interesting stuff about class API design:
good: HumaneInterface.html
doesn't get that intention-revealing interfaces are good, "tell, don't ask" is good, and code duplication is bad: cafeaulait
reaction to the above: cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/ Don't forget to read the comments. My comment:
You just know that because Java's List class doesn't have a "last" method, that everyone who needs to access the last element is going to have to write "alist.get( alist.size() - 1 ) WHICH IS DUPLICATED CODE. (And buggy as well, failing if the list is empty.)
Duplicated code is a sign of bad design, and leads to bugs. There's probably been a million bugs where someone coded alist.get( alist.size() ) attempting to get the last element (which will instead throw an exception), and no doubt less that 80% of those bugs have been fixed.
It wouldn't be so bad if Java programmers could extend existing classes (Like Cocoa programmers and Smalltalk programmers).
more reactions:
simplicity rules in the right place
java net style vs smalltalk ruby style (though I'm not sure I agree with 437 methods for Smalltalk's Object Class!)