Re: TaskList API proposal

On Mon, 2002-10-28 at 11:04, Trond Norbye wrote:
> 
> Tim Lebedkov said:
> > Users of this API must write something like
> > (int) (0.33 * (Suggestion.PRIORITY_MAX - Suggestion.PRIORITY_MIN) +
> > Suggestion.PRIORITY_MIN)
> > and recompile their files to be compatible with future changes to these
> > values.
> > Nobody will do this. That's why I think we should write the values of
> > constants to JavaDoc or create some more levels (5??, 10???).
> 
> I must say I agree with Tor on this issue... It is in my eyes _bad_
> programming style to use the internal repesentation of another class.

But then I think we have to blame javac :)  It's the one who's
copying the VALUE of my public-static-finals into the .class files
of the -clients- of the class when compiling it.

To get around this, I will
 (1) Define more levels; instead of numeric values I'll use
      prio-high, prio-normal,    prio-low
          prio-normalhi,  prio-normallow

 (2) Remove the "final" modifier, so that the values aren't considered
     constants.(Hm, perhaps that's not enough; I will go and check.)

This is one of the reasons Effective Java encourages the
use of a typesafe enum, NOT public static finals.  I should
consider using that instead.  In fact, I may go and do just that.

-- Tor

> Imagine how difficult it would be to maintain the source if you use the
> constants directly... When the source stops working one will have no idea
> what's wrong and one might need to check out the differences in the API
> lib to find out the new values....
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Trond Norbye
> 
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