[MCP] [Q] Methods not used-Keep Them!

Hannes Hirzel hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch
Fri Feb 14 15:02:19 UTC 2003


Martin Wirblat <mw.projanynet at SoftHome.net> wrote:
> 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! 
> 

The framework argument is Ok in general.
But specifically it doesn't apply here because we want to have a clean
Morphic *framework*.
For this reason Diego is asking here  on the list. Otherwise he just
could procede.
And please look at the messages in a detailed way. Do not just say in
doubt we want to keep
them. It is not  difficult adding specific stuff later again like it is
not very difficult after a diet to get more weight again.  Every good OO
project
has phases where the number of methods diminshes. At least the gurus say
so
and personally I made the experience that it is good to tidy up things
from time to time.

Cheers 
Hannes



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