From: Philip Mak <pmak@...>
Date: 2003-09-13T05:03:51+09:00
Subject: Should "new" methods do anything?

A programming style question:

Should "new" methods actually do anything, or should they only perform
initialization?

For example, let's say I have a class called "Httpd" which runs an
HTTP server. Should its interface be like this:

    server = Httpd.new(:listen_port => 80) # Initialize the server
    server.run                             # Run it

Or like this?

    Httpd.new(:listen_port => 80) # Initialize and run the server

The latter way is more streamlined, but feels bad for some reason that
I can't quite put into words right now.