Re: [Rails-devel] Current implementation, branch Rails 2.0?

[brett l. <bre...@gm...>]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Erik Vos <eri...@xs...> wrote:
>> See below for some stats if you do not believe my words.
>
> All fine, but so what?  Is size bad per se?

Class size is a leading indicator of excessive complexity, conflicting
goals, unclear design, or just generally difficult to understand code.
It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's usually an indicator of
"smelly code". [1] [2]

In general, a class should have a single, clearly defined
responsibility. I think the Hex, MapHex, GUIHex classes do a pretty
decent job of staying within their defined sets of responsibilities.
It's not perfect, but I think it illustrates the point. Also, I'm not
saying that there is a set line count limit for all classes. For
example, much of the GUI classes are going to be somewhat lengthy just
by virtue of how AWT/Swing is designed.

We're just getting to the point in the lifecycle of the project where
some of our old design decisions need to be revisited. There's a few
of those old decisions that, if we're going to be able to continue
moving the project forward, are going to need to be re-decided in
light of where we're at now.

---Brett.

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/05/code-smells.html
[2] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-cq06306/index.html