From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-10-31T02:47:51+09:00
Subject: Re: method-call style (was Re: Snippet: Tiny Featureless Ruby Web Server)

On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 12:42:25AM +0900, dblack@candle.superlink.net wrote:
> Aren't there cases where that might change, if the implementation changes?
> It seems that () is serving as a comment, potentially a fragile one.

It is possible for a method to change its behavior.  However, if a
method changes from a method that has no side effects to a method that
has side effects, then the interface has considerably changed, and any
code that calls that method is going to have to be re-evaluated.  It's
generally a bad idea to change an object's interface.

(By side-effect here I mean logical side-effects; a method that
lazy-evaluates a value and then stores that value somewhere has the same
semantics as an accessor).

Paul