[MCP] [Q] Methods not used-Keep Them!
Martin Wirblat
mw.projanynet at SoftHome.net
Fri Feb 14 14:26:47 UTC 2003
Hannes Hirzel <hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch> wrote:
< Well from an XP point of view it is better to remove them even if you
< need them later. (see Kent Beck's book on this issue).
<
< You can always bring them in again later....
<
< Having too many unused things costs in the sense of unneeded
< distraction and second guessing of the users.
Hi Hannes and Diego,
I think only for producing a minimal runtime-image you can talk of
unused things. Squeak is a framework and there have to be methods
which are not used by itself. Think of any other framework where the
API are functions for the application programmer and are not written by
calling themselves as it is characteristic for Smalltalk. Because they
are all 'unused' they would have to go all!
If I had to choose between remove all and leave all I would opt for
the latter. To make the right selection in between, requires to have
extensive knowledge of Morphic, which I certainly have not.
I think many methods in a class is no big problem, if they are
categorized properly, it is more many classes. Maybe the key for a
better Morphic is to merge classes with similar functionality and to
bring down their whole number by composition, while extending
flexibility, functionality and usability ( example: LayoutPolicy added
by Andreas Raab to Morphic ). But this requires to have at first some
ingenious ideas what common character in what areas of subclasses
exist to be extracted and made available by means of composition. This
is certainly a difficult task, for which it needs a real expert in
Morphic. I can't help but I think it would be nice if the originators
of Morphic could be convinced that their help is needed.
regards,
Martin
More information about the Squeak-dev
mailing list
|