Transcript and Dot Notation

[Alex Tweedly]

John Vokey wrote:

> All,
> I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.  Seriously:  what is gained here  
> that can't be accomplished with either a) copy and paste (my  
> favourite) or b) object duplication (my next favourite)?
>
Quote: "If I could change one thing to improve the quality of our code, 
it would be to disable the Copy/Paste button in the editor."

Now that may be an extreme position (and I can't remember where it comes 
from either :-), but I think it has a lot of merit. There's not a lot of 
perfect code in the world (*), so every time you duplicate code, you're 
actually duplicating some bugs - so when you eventually find them, 
you'll need to track down all the duplicates too.

That's why creation and use of functions, handlers and libraries is one 
of the best *long-term* productivity boosters. It can make the initial 
step take longer - to abstract out the correct functionality and put it 
into a library - but in the long run it can save you.

OO simply takes that one step further, allowing you to apply the "share 
commonality" principle more widely.


(*) even if you do have "bug-free" code, the world around you can change 
in a way that requires changes in your code - and duplicates can be a 
problem.

btw - "you" in the above paragraphs really means "me". I'm making no 
assertions about anyone else's code; I know that my code always has 
bugs, and that copy/paste has caused me a lot of heartache over the years.


-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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