>From: Alan Lovejoy <sourcery at pacbell.net>
>Reply-To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
>Subject: re: Please use accessors!
> > ** Original Sender: "Carl Gundel" <morphic at hotmail.com>
> > >From: Alan Lovejoy <sourcery at pacbell.net>
> > >Reply-To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
> > <big snip>
> > >8. Given the above, I would avoid being dogmatic on this
> > >issue.  I think the fact that so many good Smalltalk programmers
> > >still access instance variables directly, and that code that commits
> > >this "sin" has lasted unchanged for so long, should cause one to
> > >at least question whether or not it's all that sinful.
> > <snip>
> >
> > Thanks for the brain dump Alan!  :-)
> >
> > I understand the pragmatics of this issue well, but I feel compelled to 
>make
> > a counterpoint about the above.  Code that accesses ivars directly can 
>be
> > brittle.  In particular, code which uses both direct access and accessor
> > methods on the same ivars can behave in unpredictable ways.  Sometimes 
>such
> > code survives for a very long time because it is brittle and hard to
> > understand, and no one wants to touch it for fear of breaking it.
> >
> > I tend to defer writing code which accesses ivars directly until 
>performance
> > tuning time.  I wish I never had to write such code because it hurt the
> > maintainability and extensibility of my design, but I live in the real 
>world
> > (oh Bah!).
> >
> > Thanks again!
> >
> > -Carl
>
>Poorly designed code will be brittle.  But I am convinced that blaming
>direct iVar access as the culprit is an oversimplification.

Okay, but I didn't say that direct ivar access was the sole culprit of 
brittle code.  Writing code for myself, I sometimes don't use accessors, but 
when working on a team I usually automatically generate them.

It isn't possible to pin down any "always right" programming practices.  In 
my own experience, next year I won't completely agree with everything I 
might say today.  ;-)

-Carl


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