in reply to Constructor/Factory Orthodoxy

I don't think there's anything inheriently wrong with what you describe, back in the day I had lots of "constructors" that were really "factories" (except that I wasn't doing dynamic Module loading ... they were all spelled out at the top).

I don't find myself writting code like that much anymore ... A big part of that has to do with the general code conventions of where I work now ... but even when I write code for personal projects, I don't think I would use the "Constructor is a Factory" approach -- mainly for clarity.

Ask yourself what (if anything) you gain by calling your factory method "new", and if it's worth the possible confusion of other people reading your code in the future.

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Re: Re: Constructor/Factory Orthodoxy
by mojotoad (Monsignor) on Feb 26, 2003 at 00:11 UTC
    Ask yourself what (if anything) you gain by calling your factory method "new", and if it's worth the possible confusion of other people reading your code in the future.

    I don't personally gain anything by calling it "new" other than it's typical. I'm just as happy calling it "make_a_big_fat_new_object", or separating constructor methods from factory methods, as I describe above.

    I can certainly understand the concerns with clarity -- there seems to be diverse opinions on that. It wasn't my main concern with the post, however.

    Thanks,
    Matt

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