"Program to an interface, not an implementation." This concept is different from deciding whether to use Java Interfaces or abstract classes. The term interface in this context actually means "type". This is basically the same thing as the Liskov's Substitution Principle. LSP is a well defined principle whereas the above phrase is vague and leads to confusion among new developers. The interview with Erich Gamma on Artima website clarifies this confusion.
So, the term interface could refer to all the public methods in an abstract class or it could be an interface. This guideline implies that when you write code, the variable that you declare will be of appropriate type. If it is too far up the hierarchy you have to cast in order to use methods that are defined somewhere lower down in the hierarchy. Bala Paranj -----Original Message----- From: user@struts.apache.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 11:03 AM To: Paranj, Bala Subject: Why interface --0-1585081136-1123685253=:83126 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In Java/J2EE community, it seems that a lot of experienced developers tend to use a lot of interfaces, however, a lot of junior developers ignore using interface. I am not sure why interfaces seem to be favorite to some experienced developers. Can some on e explain this?Can you give examples where an interface is preferred? Thanks. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --0-1585081136-1123685253=:83126-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
