I'm interested to hear (read as it were) peoples thoughts on componentized designs. I bring it up because a couple of people have questioned my choice of this design strategy for the Mac Widgets for Java project ( http://code.google.com/p/macwidgets/ ).
Let me expound upon what I exactly mean by a componentized design. Using this type of design, the component being developed extends nothing but Object and thus only offers the methods that are part of it's API (no inheritance). I find this to be extremely explicit and very obvious. In the case of visual components (which is the majority of cases), a getComponent() method is offered, which returns a JComponent. Thus it's easy to change the implementation of the visual representation of the component without affecting down-stream developers. An example I gave in a comment on my blog (found here http://explodingpixels.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/mac-widgets-for-java-091/#comment-181 ) as to the peril of inheritance was JButton. JButton extends AbstractButton which extends JComponent. JComponent has an auto- scrolls property which all it's children inherit. What in the world does it mean for a JButton to auto-scroll? Massive inheritance trees lead to API bloat, which leads to confusion. Componentized designs force you to set your API, which in turn forces you to think about your API. The API also stays small because you expose only what developers need access to. Thoughts? -Ken P.S. You'll find that SourceList uses the compentized style design (see the javadoc here http://exploding-pixels.com/google_code/javadoc/com/explodingpixels/macwidgets/SourceList.html ). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
