RE: dia2code objc

[Mondragon, Ian]

private methods are not INTENDED to be called by a user.  that's why they're
called "private".  i think this situation is being taken too far; the best
way to design a program, whether OO or not, is to keep each component as
simple as it can be, and the whole as organized as possible.  this is
turning into a debate on how "clever" you can be with objective-c, simply
because it's not C++, which is (as i see it) horribly wrong.  the beauty of
objective-c is it's SIMPLICITY.  objective-c's simplicity is exactly what
let's a C programmer learn the language in an hour or two.  objective-c's
simplicity is what makes it so powerfull.  i firmly believe this because i
program in the language for my living.  unless you're ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE
that you will NEVER EVER EVER EVER have to access an ivar outside of a
class, keep it @protected (which is the default).  unless you're ABSOLUTELY
POSITIVE that you will NEVER EVER EVER EVER have to call a method, or
reimplement it in a subclass, keep it public.  if you choose not to
implement it as public, but there's a chance a subclass might need to do
some additional processing, add a hook before returning to allow for this
behavior.  implement your classes as just that - classes - not some
hodgepodge of multiple categories per class that WILL lead to either
clutter, confusion, or both in the long run.  

no offense to whoever suggests any of these, but i know firsthand what your
code will look like after a couple years of modifications, becuase my job is
maintaining/debugging/cleaning up old (and ofter "clever") objc code - so
it's a pet peeve of mine to see the language's features being abused for the
sake of doing something to make up for the lack of a C++ feature...

- ian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Björn Gohla [SMTP:b.gohla@gmx.de]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 11:36 AM
> To:   discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
> Subject:      Re: dia2code objc
> 
> On Tuesday 26 March 2002 18:03, Frederic Stark wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > * public methods are delcared in the main header
> > * protected methods are declared in a separate category (which can be
> > put in its own file)
> > * private methods are declared in a category located at the start of the
> > .m and implemented at the end.
> 
> i was thinking that too, but that would completely prohibit users from 
> calling the functions in it, perhaps forcing the user to handcraft some
> ugly 
> workaround should it turn out to be necessary to use the class in ways not
> 
> forseen by the designer.
> 
> > (To be frank, I have much more categories than that on a class, like one
> > category per superclass from which methods are overriden, on category
> > per informal protocol implementation, one per protocol implementation,
> > one for primitive methods, etc, etc)
> 
> 
> 
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