From: Dan Shafer <dan@...>
Date: 2005-12-28T02:42:10+09:00
Subject: Re: The Expert Ruby Programmer

Warning: Newby's first post.

I come out of the world of Smalltalk (with lots of frustrating stops  
in between there and here) and have done a lot of OO design and  
programming over the decades. I found that any non-trivial OO app had  
to be rewritten twice during its early lifetime even after it was  
working to achieve the kind of reusability and maintainability that  
are the primary economic driving forces behind OO.

Oh, and it might at least be historically interesting to note that  
one of the early Smalltalk pioneers (I think it was Alan Kay but I  
could be wrong so don't quote me) said "Any method longer than seven  
lines needs to be re-thought or re-factored." So giving yourself a  
screen or printer page of space is generous by that standard!

On Dec 27, 2005, at 3:12 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:

> The most important part of software engineering is about proper  
> distribution of functionality across a software system.   
> Unfortunately this is often quite difficult because when you start  
> out you often won't know what's the best way to do certain things.   
> Often then refactoring or even rewriting is the only cure if you  
> have to maintain something or if you have to ensure code is  
> maintainable.  A rule of thumb that helps here is to make sure  
> methods are not longer than a printer / screen page.

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Dan Shafer
Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
"Looking at technology from every angle"
http://www.eclecticity.com