On Monday, January 21, 2002, at 10:50  PM, Noel J. Bergman wrote:

>> Reasonable minds may differ.
>
> Absolutely.  Such is often how the best progress occurs.  :-)
>
>> the beauty, reusability, maintainability and elegance
>> of the corresponding code ...
>
> ... too often appear to be the first casualties of expedience.  Since
> Smalltalk makes trivial such modifications, it takes discipline to 
> preserve
> the aforementioned desirable attributes.

I'm not sure I get the tradeoff here.  Criticisms were made on some 
theoretical bloat derived from adding a single method to a system class 
in support of a system tool.  The payoff was to repeat duplicated code 
throughout the apparatus of the system tool, which according to Fowler 
is the worst stink of all.   Fowler devotes an entire chapter to the 
simplification of conditional statements.  An entire section of the 
chapter is dedicated to replacing conditionals with polymorphism.

That said, Martin acknowledges that substituting polymorphism for 
conditionals that would occur but once is overkill.  This was not the 
circumstance here, where the original question acknowledged that he 
wanted to get his complex conditional expression right before he filled 
his code with it.  The code was to operate on all Morphs, but no further 
information was given.

Hence the obvious refactoring seemed indicated.  I acknowledge other 
solutions may be indicated, but as between substantial duplication of 
complex code in a system-wide utility to operate on all morphs, and 
invading a system class with a single method, well my respect to those 
who feel so strongly to the contrary, but as I see it: no-brainer.  Now, 
there are myriad alternative solutions, as I repeatedly noted before, 
but it is pointless to speculate without more.

As to the principal question asked, which seemed most interested in the 
"best" way to express the conditional, I think that was far more a 
symptom of a problem than a request for a solution -- hence my answers 
were phrased as they were.

>> Suggest various textbooks that address these smells in greater detail.
>> I'm particularly fond of "Refactoring."
>
> Which one?  Fowler, Beck, Brant, et al; or Brown, Malveau, Brown, et al?

I was referring to Fowler.  Each of these references criticize fiercely 
the use of conditionals.  I'm unaware of any reference in that list that 
seems as concerned as some here with the horrors of "system class 
modification bloat."