When I call GA::Entity->new() it returns a randomly generated solution. When I call $ga_entity->new() it produces a randomly mutated version of $ga_entity, and when I call $ga_entity->new($other_ga_entity) it returns a cross of the two. I thought long and hard if I wanted this type of behaviour and experimented with a number of alternatives before deciding I was happy with this approach. But of course merlyn would mark me down bigtime without considering why I had done it, and what my reasons were.

I fail to see how someone would mark you down on this, because you wouldn't have the traditional my $class = ref($proto) || $proto, you would have something much more complex wrapped around: 

if (ref($proto)) {
  if (ref($_[0])) { 
    cross polinate
  }
  else { 
    mutate 
  } 
} 
else {
  construct new
}

[download]
Which would look far more reasonable in a code review, and would almost inevitably have to be documented. So I don't buy your argument.

In reply to Re: Re: Re (tilly) 2: Paradigm Shift - Dual Use Constructors by Matts
in thread Paradigm Shift - Don't use strict by Ovid

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