On 7/15/07, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 08:40:10AM +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:
> >
> > With regard to premature optimization: I just made it a habit to use
> > chomp! in this case because I dislike creating an object that is
> > immediately thrown away when I can avoid it easily.  I'm not religious
> > here - it's just my personal rule of thumb.  As I said "inplace
> > modification" is nothing special, it's just the normal OO way of doing
> > things: object state changes.  Maybe people tend to forget that String
> > and Fixnum are objects just like any other object (ok Fixnum is
> > immutable and immediate but that's about it) and maybe that's the reason
> > why they feel that inplace modification is special or bad.  Dunno.  Chad
> > mentioned issues that can arise in complex code from inplace
> > modification and took that as his personal guideline to avoid it.  I
> > have a different personal guideline...
>
> My personal guideline is basically to avoid in-place modification unless
> I have specific reason to use it.  I find that an approach more
> reminiscent of functional style lends itself to readability as well as
> technical benefits for complex code, generally -- and when it doesn't,
> that qualifies as "specific reason to use" in-place modification.

Yeah Robert, that was my feeling and that's what I really wanted to
discuss, sorry if I got too offensive. I know I often forget the "?"
when asking questions. :(

After some thoughts I just have to say that Chad seems to make his
life easier than I make mine and I will consider his style in the
future too.

Conclusion, as this seemed to be quite a simple question, there are no
simple questions ;)

>
> I guess there's a sort of fuzzy area in the middle where one tends to
> lean one way or the other, based on personal preferences.
Yup and that's the interesting stuff
>
> --
> CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
> Amazon.com interview candidate: "When C++ is your hammer, everything starts
> to look like your thumb."
Hey I never read this one, GREAT!!!
>
>

Robert

-- 
I always knew that one day Smalltalk would replace Java.
I just didn't know it would be called Ruby
-- Kent Beck