My thoughts...
Should my module's methods croak, or return error codes when they fail?
Error codes. Over the years, I've run into more libraries than I care to think about (mostly C, not perl) which die and take my app down with them when they think something went wrong. I don't care if your code absolutely, positively has to have a certain database available in order to function - return an error code so that the caller can then decide to use an alternate implementation, create the database you need and try again, or just die if nothing else works. Unless you know that there is no way the caller could possibly cure your 'fatal' condition, just tell it. Don't croak without warning.

Side question: I'm currently debating with myself over when it's appropriate for a method to report an error to STDERR on its own instead of just passing back an error code to the caller and letting them decide whether to report it or not. Thoughts?

How much internal error checking is sensible?
Sanity checking is always good. Don't make assumptions in your code - if it's possible for you to be passed bad data, make a reasonable effort to ensure that you didn't.

Should I use generic methods that can both get and set, or is a single one each
I go with generics. In my experience, that seems to be the more common perl idiom.

What works best, lots of methods to set things, or via the constructor in one go?
Both!

In reply to Re: Thoughts On Object-Oriented Module Design. Input Sought. by dsheroh
in thread Thoughts On Object-Oriented Module Design. Input Sought. by ajt

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