[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






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