hi brian hm. it seems that either i can't express myself clearly or we just have quite different approaches while writing programs.
Brian Moseley wrote:
Angela Schreiber wrote:
this is the point about private methods from my point of view. since it's an opensource project, i will not know (and i should not know) about subclasses. but i must pay attention and respect potential subclasses, if a mark a method protected.
well yeah. there is a happy medium. for a method where you don't have a strong reason to keep it private, make it protected and let subclassers decide whether or not they will use it.
it seems that you define the happy medium :) i regret to say: i don't agree with your statements. i don't agree that a method should be protected just for the potential case that someone could find it useful. i think it should be the other way round. maybe for a similar reason, i avoid creating additional, implementation specific 'public' methods, that are not defined by the interface(s). that's why i did not agree with your modification in the resource- factory where you added extra public getter and setter methods for private fields that have nothing to do with the job of the factory (creating resources). hm... i get the impression that we have some fundamental disagreement. what a pitty. have a nice weekend! kind regards angela
