| Re: taking the widget plunge. help [message #21684 is a reply to message #21655] |
Wed, 13 September 2000 06:02   |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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I want to thank JD and Martin for organizing
my Fall programming schedule. I'm so busy
working I really didn't have time to do it
myself, so I appreciate it. :-)
JD writes about a program that is getting
downloaded from my web page rather more
often lately:
> One note which I think is instructive. You include a section on customization
> where you outline how to directly modify your source to add personal or
> company-wide set-up lists. This is a very useful feature, but I think you're
> going to cause yourself and potential users grief here. It's a *perfect* place
> to flex our object oriented muscles. The problem will be that in a year you'll
> think of a great way to redesign it, or maybe RSI makes some changes to device
> which prompt a rewrite. Then, either all the users who have made their own
> modifications will be out of luck, or you'll be contrained in what kind of
> updates you can do. It is exactly these types of situations that scream out for
> some sort of object relationship. If, rather than giving direction on how to
> change your code, you gave a simple example of INHERIT'ing your class, and
> chaining to its setup code, you could fully preserve "forward compatibility" --
> i.e. drop-in replacement of your updated code.
I actually did give this quite a bit of thought
at the time I wrote the program. And I considered
Martin's idea of text files, too. And for the same
reason he likes them: they are easy for inexperienced
users to figure out. I decided against the first
option because I had run out of steam writing the
documentation and I figured that if I had to write
the documentation for object inheritance I might as
well write the book I was writing the damn program to
avoid writing. (If you know what I mean.)
I decided against text files, because I already had
a problem with multiple files and I didn't really
want to add any more.
But both of these ideas are worth considering, and
if my ftp logs show that anyone besides JD and Martin
are using the darn thing I may have to re-consider
my earlier decisions. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
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