Further derail! What are people's thoughts on implicit vs. explicit
accessors? I prefer explicit ones, but I confess that it's almost
entirely because I learned Java before Actionscript. You can't argue
that explicit setters are required for a "serious" language, because C#
prefers implicit setters. (For the sake of argument, let's just agree
that C# is a serious object-oriented language.)
From a practical standpoint, using myObject.property is perfectly
effective. If it's a property that should be insulated from direct
modification, you just apply a public implicit getter to a private
field. If it's a property that need not be insulated, such as
MovieClip._x, why not just make it public? As long as the naming and
effects are consistent, I don't see a practical drawback.
Theoretically, though, I like explicit setters because they make it very
clear that you're calling methods which act on internal fields.
myObject.getProperty() tells the coder "you're getting a value, but NOT
necessarily the value of any particular internal field," while
myObject.property implies that they're getting internal state from the
object. (Another advantage, in Actionscript, is that using explicit
setters reserves pure dot-notation for movieclip paths: foo.bar.baz must
clearly be a MovieClip nesting, while foo.getBar().getBaz() must clearly
be class objects.)
In the end, my choice of explicit setters is based on habit and personal
preference. Opinions?
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