Jim R. Wilson wrote:
Stick to calling a class's public methods, rather than accessing its $mFoobar members, whenever possibleMeh. Getters and setters are clutter - just access what you want and be done with it.
If only more languages used an Eiffel approach to this...
Keywords like 'private' and 'const' just end up making extension development more difficult.
Sounds like the result of bad design rather than a real problem. If it's private, it should likely be something that Joe Averageprogrammer will never need to access. If it's const, well, it should really be const.
Don't depend on implementation details of MW's methods, just the public interfacesWell yeah, in an ideal world, yes. Unfortunately, it's sometimes necessary to clone swaths of the codebase to make a small functional change hidden where a wgHook doesn't reach. Use your judgement.
Sounds like procedural rather than OO thinking. But that gets back to the original design problem.
Unfortunately, resolving problems through design rather than through code (via kludge) is problematic in a distributed development model like open source code with no dictator setting real standards. Closed source environments can avoid this by appointing the dictator and giving it power. Corporate environments fail because the dictator is, more often than not, a moron.
My decades of experience in developing real-world, mission critical apps (the kind that keep aircraft in the air) is that the closer to the theoretically "perfect" design/code you get, the fewer problems down the line. When someone opens a forbidden door, all hell eventually breaks loose.
Mike