From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-02-12T17:14:37+09:00
Subject: Re: inheriting from base classes

On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, 8:15:29 AM, dblack wrote:

> In any case, if a method is listed in an alphabetical list of
> methods, why would there be any mystery?

There's a difference between a theoretical mystery and a practical
mystery.  An alphabetical list of methods is one thing, but my reason
for minimising methods is so you can *browse* the methods of a class
to get an idea of the concept that class espouses.

> (I think we've sort of recentered the discussion, not necessarily in
> a way that pertains directly to the question of inheriting from base
> classes, though I could be wrong.)

Whoops, did *I* do that? :)

I've stated enough times that inheriting from generic classes without
preserving that generality is bad (IMO), e.g.

   class OrderedHash < Hash               # good

   class AssignmentResults < Hash         # bad
   
And one reason is that you are not putting enough effort into what
methods are available to the users of your class.

So my previous post about the badness of too many methods is
consistent with my point of view on this whole thread.

Gavin