From: Holden Glova <dsafari@...>
Date: 2002-01-14T15:09:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Small Methods - a ramble

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On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 11:28, Ron Jeffries wrote:
> I noticed in some code that Chet and I were writing that, as Smalltalkers,
> we tend to write really tiny methods. Here's a patch of code to show what I
> mean. Pay no attention to what it does, just look at how it looks.
>
>   def filesUnderManagement
>     names = (Dir.entries(@directoryName).select { | each | ! (/.bak/ =~
> each) }).sort names.reject { |each| FileTest.directory?(sourceName(each)) }
>   end
>
>   def archiveFiles
>     Dir.entries(@directoryName + '/archive').reject { | each | /^\./ =~
> each }.sort.reverse end
>
>   def backup
>     timeString = Time.now.strftime("%Y%m%d%H%M%S")
>     filesUnderManagement.each { | each | backupFile(each, timeString)}
>   end
>
>   def backupFile (fileName, timeString)
>     File.syscopy(sourceName(fileName),
> archiveName("#{fileName}.#{timeString}")) end
>
>   def sourceName(fileName)
>     @directoryName + '/' + fileName
>   end

I wish one of you XP book writers would put an example like this actually in 
your books when something like small methods is mentioned :) Thanks for the 
example Ron - I had no idea when you said small, you meant that small, but I 
like it.

Part of the problem I have is, while I'm writing code I'm not exactly 
sure what I can call every small section of the code. To me that is very 
hard. This isn't to say that I don't want to write small methods, it just 
takes me longer to do it. And of course with people like management saying 
'go faster!' I definately don't make my methods as small as you have shown 
above. I do find it very readable though. Same goes for splitting code out 
into a new class. Can you show some granularity for your classes?

I wonder if it is also readable because the code doesn't have excess clutter 
that I call 'helper' code. Code that is required to assist in your job but 
isn't actually the code doing the job. I find there is lots of this sort of 
code in Java.

Thanks for the eye-opener.

- -- 
Signed,
Holden Glova
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