From: martindemello@... (Martin DeMello)
Date: 2002-10-17T02:44:23+09:00
Subject: Re: final in ruby

"Gavin Sinclair" <gsinclair@soyabean.com.au> wrote in message news:<030e01c2739d$343eb620$666332d2@nosedog>...

> How would your method get overwritten anyway?  (I know it's possible, so in
> some sense it's a rhetorical question, but by answering it we can discuss some
> design philosophies.)
> 
> I have some sympathy for your concern, but I have learned to adopt the
> following attitudes:
>  - if other people overwrite my method, that's their business; the
>    warranty is void
>  - if I overwrite my own method *accidentally*, I either have a messy
>    design, a bad approach, or a small brain :)

For what it's worth, that was the same revelation that made me stop
compulsively checking argument types in my 'utility' classes. I
decided that I was doing inherently single-programmer stuff, and
anyone else using the class would *also* be doing single-programmer
stuff; there would never be an issue of, say, two people independently
modifying code in the same runtime program. Therefore, there was a
definite 'end user' programmer, and it was up to them to see that all
their arguments had the proper functionality. Saved a lot of useless
(and ugly) ifs and asserts.

martin